


Winchester Recurrence

by write_light



Series: Take the Devil (From My Mind) [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M, Preseries, Slash, Supernatural and J2 Big Bang Challenge 2011, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-29
Updated: 2011-07-29
Packaged: 2018-01-08 00:00:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 17
Words: 67,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1125935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/write_light/pseuds/write_light
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: 1870s. American Midwest.</p><p>THEN: Sam and Dean were raised apart, haunted by their parents' fiery deaths. Reunited years later, they fell in love, not knowing they were brothers. What destroyed their family attacked them as well, but they defeated it, they believed. The shocking truth of their connection set them on a dark road as they struggled to rebuild a tenuous partnership. Two tormentors revealed a world beyond angels and demons – the true source of the curse that marks the Winchester souls. Separated by death, each believed the road through Hell was their best and only salvation.</p><p>NOW: Sam is lost in Hell, Dean is lost on Earth. Their risky deal demands an eternity apart from each other, but can the Winchesters keep that promise?  Dean enters a dance with Death to get Sam back; Sam's time in Hell shows him the truth of Azazel the Yellow-Eyed and the fire that guides him. Reuniting the brothers will come at great cost – Sam's sanity, Dean's faith, and a war between Heaven and Hell with humans as cannon fodder. To save the world and stop evil, Sam and Dean must move closer to each other, to what they were always meant to do, and into the trap set for them – the Winchester Recurrence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PROLOGUE

**Author's Note:**

> _Reposted after accidentally deleting it. GAH._
> 
>  
> 
> Soundtrack is [HERE](http://write-light.livejournal.com/273862.html) at LiveJournal (and on Box.com). Full acknowledgements, author's (copious) notes, and artwork by the amazing [pvt_zaslavky](http://pvt-zaslavsky.livejournal.com/) are chaptered at the end.
> 
> Betaed by: the incomparable [keerawa](http://keerawa.livejournal.com/) , with assistance from [afg1](http://afg1.livejournal.com/) and [aprylrae](http://aprylrae.livejournal.com/).
> 
> Crossposted at [Dreamwidth](http://write-light.dreamwidth.org/8052.html) too.
> 
> Author's Note: Third in the Take the Devil series, this is the conclusion to Santa Fe & Iron and Remedy for Cain. Reading those stories first is not required, but will definitely enrich this story.

 

_End of October, 1874 – Chickamauga, Georgia_

Eli Welford stood in the tall, brown grass at the edge of a deserted battlefield, no longer entirely himself. The visitor had come to him an hour before, as Eli was praying for his brother Jeremiah's current misfortunes to deepen. He stood now in the dusk in his dark blue uniform, fearful of what was in store for him yet unable to leave until the business at hand was finished. It made perfect sense that it was Jeremiah who emerged from the heavy curtain of fog drifting over the now-silent field.

If Eli had been able to speak, he would have warned his brother, feud or no feud, to turn tail and run, but Jeremiah did not appear to be the same man any longer. He was still younger, taller and more powerfully built, and he'd put on his grey rebel uniform as a cheap taunt. But the loose swagger and cruel smirk were unlike him, and he radiated a preacher's pomposity.

"Less than ten years since the War ended," Jeremiah observed, not taking his eyes off his brother. "I can still feel their blood soaking down into the Earth, and all their pain with it," he added, a grin spreading over his face. He stopped an arm's length from Eli and stared, curious and unblinking. "Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?"

"When is he going to be ready?" Eli asked, ignoring the question, his voice serious.

"Any day now, give or take a few months. You know how time flies down below." "This is taking longer than we expected."

" _We're_ the impatient ones," Jeremiah chuckled. "If you're getting antsy, take up knitting," he added, his expression darker now.

"It is written on skin and on clay: Our elders will leave the world to us, when their war is done," Eli recited. "And that fight is coming."

"It is written on clay and on skin: Our elders will show us the way toward God," Jeremiah drawled back. "A fight we welcome. Too bad you don't have our Lord on your side."

"We've stopped the Winchesters - can _your_ death be far behind?" Eli threatened.

"Why haven't you just killed me already?" Jeremiah asked, leaning in close.

"Because I have orders not to," said Eli, his voice barely controlled.

"And why haven't I killed you?" Jeremiah leered.

"Because you can't," Eli said confidently. The angel in him extended its wings and the ground trembled with his might.

Jeremiah lost his smirk for a moment, then stood straight with the bravado of a criminal who sees the noose-rope fraying above him. His eyes flared with the yellow flames of Hell.

Eli staggered back a bit, then held firm against the power he felt. "Azazel, what have you become?" He folded his wings away, a look of disgust on his face. "The fallen do not rise again."

"Hiding Dean for years - how typical of that half-god you follow," Azazel sneered. "How typical of all of you and your 'righteous ways'. Why doesn't he raise you up over us, if he's so powerful?"

Azazel's taunts provoked the reaction he expected.

"And you think following your Satan will give you the advantage in the war to come?"

"Our Lord has defeated even _God's_ plans – he can certainly defeat his own brother," Azazel gloated, his eyes afire again. " _He_ found Samuel; he separated them forever. Samuel will be one of us soon enough, and Dean will weaken and betray them both, just as Michael did Lucifer, just as your Lord did in the first days, covered in his brother's blood."

"You're getting ahead of yourself," Uriel said coldly. "Sam and Dean still exist, as does their unnatural need to be with each other…."

"We'll be rid of them soon enough. Humans will have no protectors left, and so they will choose sides, fight, and fall, and then – God will listen to us again. He will have no other children clamoring for him – he will have to listen." Azazel's voice faltered on the last few words, so great was that hope.

"And he will speak to us again," whispered Uriel, his eyes searching heavenward as the fog muffled the sounds of the night around them.

"Keep your end of the bargain, brother," said Azazel. "Dean cannot escape from life this time." "And you keep yours, brother," Uriel replied, spitting the word 'brother' from his mouth. "Destroy Samuel's soul once and for all."

With this promise, Eli and Jeremiah's long battle was over at last. On the spot where Eli's Union garrison and Jeremiah's hardscrabble Confederates had slaughtered each other a decade before, a brilliant white light burned its way out of Eli and he fell on the battlefield of Chickamauga, finally. Jeremiah, forever separated from his brother, lay face down in the smoldering grass as black smoke vanished into the ground beneath him.

***

Far to the west, a wayward man was stumbling home, brotherless but not without hope - he'd found a way to die.

 


	2. PROLOGUE

September 15, 1874 – Memphis, Tennessee

Dean insisted on only three things: dirt from the spot where Sam had been killed, a bluff-top location for the funeral at sunset, and forgiveness for his brother. He got the first two, but had a hard time coming up with the third. He had seen Sam dragged into Hell, seen him burn, and still wondered if that was Sam's goal all along – to do it his way, take the risk, be the hunter he'd become after John died.

Molly, Dean's oldest and only friend, knew that Sam had died a year before, nothing more. She pressed Dean for the story when she first found him alive in Memphis, but the pain in his eyes was too much for her. She invited Dean into her house, much to her husband Simon's surprise, and now, weeks since he appeared at the hospital afire with fever, she stood in the second floor parlor of her vast house, watching him suffer. He would not tell her.

The house, a mansion on a tree-shaded street, was almost as big as the brothel she and Dean had run in Salina, and so very silent, ever since Dean had moved in, unlike the brothel. She had expected him to recover slowly, but he rarely spoke, and that was not the Dean she knew.

"Sam needs to be– we have to remember him," Dean said, as the clock ticked softly in the corner.

"A memorial is very appropriate, Mr. Winchester," Molly said in her soft, stern voice, watching the side of Dean's face as he stared out the window. The branches of the large oak outside her home formed a gap that framed the city beyond, but she knew he wasn't seeing Memphis.

_I can't tell you about Hell, Molly. I can't tell you I went there, twice, to get him out. Because then you'll ask how. And you'll ask why I went there to save a man who wasn't even family. And you'll ask why I failed._

Dean shoved that thought far down, away from his mind and his eyes and his face, where Molly might read it and learn who Sam Winchester really was – not his lover, exactly.

I can't tell you I failed him in the worst way and now he's some big demon king down there and I don't even know what "demon king" means. What happened to you, Sam?

"We could commemorate your parents as well-"

"No," he cut her off, sharper than he wanted to. "Sorry, Molly, this is for Sam."

She saw what she'd feared, the working of his cheek muscles but nothing else - not tears, not anger, not Dean Winchester ready to drive his opponents off balance so he could crush them. She saw abdication, and that was not the Dean she knew either.

"I understand," she said, just as soft, just as stern.

"It'll take me a few days."

"You're not fully recovered, and you know it. There's no hurry."

"Simon's had enough of his lingering houseguest."

"He's not bothered in the least," Molly said encouragingly, although it wasn't true.

"Where did you find a man like him?"

It came out sounding rude, but Dean meant it as praise, and high praise at that. Molly took it as intended.

"In Albuquerque, of all places. He looked into my eyes and not too hard into my past."

"He'll answer to me if he ever questions your character."

Molly left that boast alone, nodding her head. It was a flash of the Dean she'd met years ago, the one she'd hoped to find again. When Dean's call for help first reached her far off in the West, a tightness settled in her stomach; when she came to Memphis, Dean was nowhere to be found, nor was Samuel, and the tightness became pain. Volunteer work at the Marine Hospital had given her something to do, to keep her busy until Dean, being Dean, showed up eventually.

She hadn't expected him to be in her hospital, half out of his mind and unable to speak about what happened to Samuel after their mysterious trip to Sikeston.

"As I said, Mr. W., you're not fully yourself yet; that fever alone would have killed most men – or sent them to the sanitarium for life."

Dean was silent again, staring out at something beyond the city. His time in Hell was playing out again in his head.

"Would you care to fill in the missing year now?" she asked quietly, moving to sit near him. "Samuel vanished over 14 months ago, and you've only just returned to us." Concern edged into her voice, and that got his attention.

"When I'm ready."

"Where were you, Mr. W?" she asked, her tone slipping into pleading.

Dean didn't move.

"Simon will go to Sikeston with you," Molly offered, changing her tactic.

"No, he won't."

"You can't make it by yourself."

Dean looked down at the floor, fine polished oak that reminded him of the ballroom where Sal had taught him to dance. His life had crumbled and blown away; first the brothel in Salina, then Sal's place in St. Louis, and then Sam and all they'd built together in such a short time. Time to take up some of that ash before it's all gone.

***

September 16, 1874 – Memphis, Tennessee

Dean approached Malachi's small and simple house with caution. Shoved against the river, it sat untouched and unwanted by the rest of Memphis, the tiny two-room home of a man Sam had known as a hunter and mentor. Malachi hadn't shown his face in the three weeks since Dean returned from his second trip into Hell, his second empty-handed failure to save Sam, or Mary, or John.

You want to know the truth, Molly? This guy Malachi is an angel. Yep, wings and all. Blinding light, voice that breaks glass, and even he fell to his knees in front of the man who sent me into Hell. What he is, I don't know. I don't want to know, and neither do you. That's why I don't tell you. Because I hope you can go through your life not knowing what's behind every door.

When Dean turned the door handle, it opened easily onto Malachi's silent rooms. Lining the shelves was the collection of odd knickknacks and ancient books Dean had poked at while Sam sat on Malachi's sofa revealing all of their plans – only a year before. There was the book with Dean's name on the last page surrounded by what Dean could only assume was angelic writing. The books and everything else an angel could call his own were crowded into the small front room and the rest of the house stood unused.

"Where are you, you mysterious bastard?" Dean asked, looking at the empty back room, sun slanting in from the window to the back.

Dean's approach to summoning the things that seemed to control his fate was direct and profane. It always worked, to his surprise. But this time, the house remained silent.

"Tez? You here? Care to explain yourself?" he asked cautiously. He hadn't said the name since he came back from Hell, not once, and now it sent a shiver down his spine.

I'm not quite sure what the hell you are, Tez. Not a god, and not God. A pain in my ass, at the very least.

Silence, and more silence, rang in his ears.

In the back bedroom he found their satchels, arranged neatly on the top shelf of a closet that opened only stubbornly. They were covered by a heavy tarp so as to hide them from any intruders. Dean purposely didn't open Sam's bag but when it fell into his arms, he huffed hard to get the scent out of his nose. His teeth ground together as he tossed it on the bureau and turned away, eyes flicking from object to object in the room, his only way of stabilizing himself.

He turned almost a full circle before he found the door and strode out into the empty main room where the fireplace loomed. He looked back once at the bedroom as if it had betrayed him. After a minute of pacing and breathing deeply, he went back to the closet and got his own bag and grabbed Sam's by the long strap, letting it swing low against his ankles as he headed out onto the front porch. He inhaled the afternoon air, a humid mix of river and swampland, fresh and stagnant, and that seemed to help diffuse the fury of his grief.

The carriage shed held what he really needed – a black coach, last used to bring him, bloody and delirious, from Sikeston back to Malachi's house over a year before, a coach he and Sam had stolen from two demons. All he needed now was a horse willing to pull it.

***

September 23, 1874 - South of Sikeston, Missouri

The weather had turned toward a late summer revival and Dean sweated his way past town after town until he found a crossing over the Mississippi and was once more in the flat land of Missouri. He tried again and again to avoid retracing his steps, their steps, from Memphis to their doom at the crossroads, but the route led him back again and again to familiar turns and views he hadn't realized were etched in his mind.

No one traveled the road with him. At night, he kept going well past dark, pushing the horse to exhaustion before they stopped. He slept slumped over on the driver's seat, or against a tree alongside the road – inside the coach smelled of Sam, so vaguely but unbearably like Sam. On the third morning, he saw the gigantic oak and then the white signpost that pointed in all directions. Dean wept now and then along the way there, but at the crossroads where Sam had died it made no sense to cry.

He left the coach well back from the intersection and approached on foot. The ground was noticeably grayer at the crossroads, and somewhere in that pale soil was his brother.

The hot south wind rustled the grass and the leaves of the tree, an incessant wind that spun up spiraling dust clouds from the road. Sam was in all of them, and when one twisted suddenly toward Dean, the dirt got into his eyes and his mouth, tasting bitter and burnt.

He stopped a dozen feet or so from the sign where Sam had tied him, where he'd seen firsthand the deception of demons as Sam was engulfed in fire and incinerated, soul and all by Azathunn. He turned and looked back toward Memphis, where he'd seen Tez come from, the closest thing to God that Dean had ever met, and yet nothing like he expected God to be. The wind raced across the empty prairie, taking pieces of Sam with it, as it had for nearly a year.

But Sam was still there, he knew. Dean knelt at the spot where Sam had been standing in front of him - to protect him from the fire demon at first and then stepping aside, as they'd agreed, to let Dean die.

I was supposed to go. I was supposed to get Mom and Dad out of Hell, and Sam, and me too, somehow. But then the thing took Sam. It lied and took him. It stabbed into his chest, burned his soul free, and the two of them spun away to nothing in the flames.

In his mind, Dean could see Sam's face, horrified and sad,

And Tez, a giant in feathers and armor, a god if nothing else, raced toward us too late - too late for Sam, and for me. Too late to stop his brother the fire demon, even with the torrents of rain he brought from the sky. Nothing could stop that fire.

"Dean?"

The voice was quiet, and yet held power Dean only barely grasped. It asked once and waited. Dean had no way to say what he wanted, but still it waited. His fists clenched and unclenched.

"Bring him back, Tez."

"I can't. He's in Hell now, and I have no power there."

"You? You have no power? You're God."

"Not … yet," Tez said, his uncertain tone a surprise to Dean.

Dean looked at him now. They were the same height when Tez was in human form, but Tez seemed even more solid now that Dean's time in Hell had left him hollowed and gaunt. Tez looked the same as before, dense black hair cut short, eyes black but human, not a demon's eyes, and the reddish band that ran across his face, just under his brow, across both eyes from temple to temple, like a birthmark. He looked like a man, but he was not.

"Not yet?" Dean asked, irritated and unwilling to contemplate what Tez might have meant.

"Not for a while."

"You higher beings need to stop talking to humans like we enjoy your cryptic mumbo-jumbo. We don't."

"Why are you here, Dean?"

"I came for Sam. To bring him home and bury him."

"You need to learn to let people go. Make your way on your own. He's not here."

"No thanks to you. Your 'brother' or whatever that thing was – that's not a brother. Sam is a brother. Was my brother," he corrected, looking at the ground again.

Tez watched Dean slip the pack from his back and fish out two small jam jars taken from Molly's kitchen. Dean knelt at the spot where Sam had burned, opened one jar and cupped his hand to gather the dirt into its mouth. He screwed the lid on when it was full and repeated the gathering with the other jar, digging deep into the hard, burnt soil of the crossroads. The thing that took Sam had incinerated the ground and melted the grit into glassy slivers that cut his fingers. The pain burned into him, but he kept digging deeper, trying to find Sam. His fingertips shone red in the sun from a multitude of tiny wounds.

When he'd put the top back onto the second jar, he wiped the sweat from his eyes and left bloody lines across his face. Tez looked at the marks with sorrow, then averted his face.

***

"Why two jars?" he asked after a while.

"Why just one?" Dean replied, as he wrapped the jars in rags and placed them tenderly in the pack.

"You're getting better at those answers yourself, Dean."

"Look, I have things to do. Is there something you need to say, or have you come to warn me again about not going into Hell? Because I've been, twice, and it didn't work out.

"It never would have worked, Dean. You needed to see that."

"Thank you, then. Thank you for sending me into Hell. Two times."

"Samuel is gone. You need to keep on the path, save what can be saved. Walk away."

"If I could walk away, would I be here?" Dean said, the pain finding an outlet finally through his gritted teeth.

"Malachi is restored."

"Meaning what?"

"He is his former self."

"His old human self? Or his old angel self?"

"He is what he wanted to be. He has the confidence of the Garrison because he speaks for me. Politicians they are, ruining Heaven for the rest, but they worship power and so they have not yet abandoned me."

"Once again, far too cryptic," Dean said, glaring at the road rather than look at Tez.

"We may be able to rescue things, Dean, at least partly. Get back to Memphis and get this funeral over with – the angel's got work for you."

Dean looked up to see empty roads in all directions, his eyes dark and brimming.

"Never tell me how to mourn my brother. Ever again," he said, as the anger of a year without Sam took over.

***

September 27, 1874 – Memphis, Tennessee

Molly went to bed after midnight - a remnant of her earlier life hosting Dean's guests at the Impala Club – and heard Dean pacing his room. She heard him wake up just after five every morning, his heavy tread on the hall runner as he headed outside for places unknown. His room was made and tended, at first, but as the weeks passed it had slipped into disarray and the sheets were tangled and left that way.

Dean was weak and ate poorly, when at all, and Molly had seen him wobble more than once in the halls, or lean hard against the table in the dining room as he passed. The rattling china cups gave him away and he stood up straight again, but she'd marked it. She fed him at every opportunity, food she'd made in the kitchens in Salina, food her husband Simon would not willingly eat because it was too flavorful, too robust. It carried the richness of the pork stew her mother had made her as a child, singing over the fire as smoke billowed from the poor wood, tossing chilies in by the handful.

Now, with a house full of servants, Molly still made food for Simon, and other food for Dean, which Simon worried about. Dean heard them arguing and knew he was the cause, but he stayed clear and let Molly win her own battles.

***

Dean had insisted that they both come with him to the funeral, although Molly had no intention of being anywhere else that day but at Dean's side. They stood on the bluff over the river as the late summer evening sun turned orange, and Dean unfolded a paper that he'd been carrying in his pocket for a day or two since he returned from his mission. On it was a poem he'd copied down over many hours in the library, pasting two or three versions together until he found the tone most like Sam's own voice in his memory.

Something appropriate, Sam. Hope you like it.

Simon stood quietly next to Molly, watching this man she'd raced across the country to find, the ragged, unshaven man who'd appeared mysteriously at the Marine hospital and been handed over to her, as she told it, by a doctor she didn't know, a doctor who let her into Dean's room when no one else would. Molly had explained only that Dean was a friend of the oldest and best kind, a man to whom she owed much, the same thing she'd said when they took him into their home, and when he'd insisted on the funeral, and whenever Simon pressed her. For Simon, it finally came down to one sentence, a statement that he believed because of the force in her eyes when she said it: "I love you, Simon. I married you. But I am Dean's friend and he is mine, and that will not go away simply because you are foolish and jealous. Trust me, or I am not your wife."

Simon waited now, hoping the funeral was a sign that Dean's time in their house was coming to a close, but uncertain of how to make the day better for him, or for Molly.

"Will he be all right after this?" he whispered to her.

"Hush, and watch," she said. "We'll see soon enough."

***

Dean fumbled with the paper as his jaw worked to say the words.

Carried through many lands and many seas  
I come, brother, to these miserable funeral rites  
Bringing to you, the dead, the final gifts of mortals,  
To speak in vain at you who are mute ash.

 

The letters swam in the shaky handwriting he had tried to make exact and clean. He gave up any hope of saying it out loud and instead said it to Sam directly, in his mind.

In cruelty to me Fate made a ghost of you,  
Oh, poor brother, snatched unfairly away from me,  
These are the offerings of ancient ceremony,  
Small foods damp with a brother's tears. Keep them  
and forever, my brother, hail and farewell.

 

Molly saw his lips moving and only the faintest sound reached her. She went to him and rested her hand under his arm, the way he'd escorted her down the stairs to greet their guests. They'd been the talk of Salina, a madam who didn't trade and a man who owned a brothel but didn't touch his girls. It made no sense to the people of the town, and so they found it fascinating.

As Molly stood by him, he talked to Sam again.

She found me, Sam. She came, like I knew she would. She's right here.

I have to do this, and then I can take on Malachi and the rest of whatever the world has to throw at us. I wish I'd known you so long ago, before Sal got to me, before Dad died. Before the fire came to Salina, it was just us – we had a week together, maybe two, and I loved you.

Molly laid her head against Dean's shoulder and wept for him, and for Samuel, the tall and loyal hunter she'd seen transform Dean from a cold and lonely man into a human being, better than all her efforts had ever proven. She had stood by Dean for years, waiting every night for his life to be right, until Sam appeared, and when she saw them shake hands and not let go, she knew something good had come, finally. And when she saw the club consumed by fire just two months later, and Dean came limping out with Sam over his shoulder, she knew that they would keep each other safe.

Dean spoke then, faintly, in the orange light before the sun vanished, his words to Sam a whisper that Molly could finally make out clearly.

"And when you showed up," he said in a low voice, "I wish I'd known you, and we wouldn't have done all the things we did. I don't care about it much - I never could. I have a brother, Sam. You're my blood. Nobody gets to say anything about that, or about us."

Molly lifted her head slowly from Dean's shoulder as the import of the words sank in. The man who loved Dean was Samuel. His brother. She'd seen their love, as obvious as the red couch in his office. It had been splashed across their faces when they came downstairs the night of the fire, and when they'd left Salina, somber and wounded, a week later. She hadn't seen brothers, only two men deep in new love. This will take some time. Her head spun with this, and Dean looked back nervously, realizing what he'd done.

"Aren't you going to say anything, Mr. Winchester?" Simon asked tentatively from where he'd kept a respectful distance.

Dean shook his head vigorously as if it could remove the vise that crushed his skull.

Molly turned on her husband to shush him, her arm still linked with Dean's. He stepped back a bit under her glare.

"May I then?" Simon asked quickly.

Dean nodded without turning.

Simon cleared his throat and began, "Solitude teaches us who we need; Sorrow teaches us what that person means to us."

"Simon, that was-" Molly began.

"That was beautiful and thank you," Dean said tersely.

He stuffed the half-read eulogy back in his pocket and took a jar of soil and ash from the bag, twisted the lid off and shook the contents into the hole. The hole held nothing else, only rich Tennessee soil and now a burned, grayish Missouri dust that Dean hoped had some trace of Sam in it, because there was nothing else he could hope for.

No bier, no body. Nobody.

A sound of wings caught his attention and he looked back past Simon to see an older man with the large body of a former field hand now dressed in a shabby brown suit, striding up to the bluff. There was none of the old weakness in him, this messenger of God.

Dean said nothing, not even watching him approach any longer. Simon observed the interloper with curiosity. While Molly judged the danger to be minor, based on Dean's reaction, she stayed just a few inches from him as Malachi approached.

"You're late," Dean said when Malachi was close, all the while staring down at Sam's ashes in the hole in the ground.

"I will miss him too, but he chose his role. You are needed for other things."

Dean turned around, tracks of tears down both cheeks, but his face was steady.

"Someone got his mojo back," Dean said. There was no respect in his voice, and Malachi bristled.

"You'd do well to follow our guidance. The ruin you and your brother have brought might still be lessened."

"If you have answers, I'm listening."

"Brother?" Simon blurted out, hoping he was mistaken in what he'd just heard.

Malachi continued, ignoring Simon. "Later, when you've finished… this."

"Here and now, damn you. Molly, Simon, this is Malachi. He's a real angel."

"He doesn't seem all that nice," she said, already put off by the man's tone, but misinterpreting Dean's honest assessment of the threat.

"Malachi, why don't you explain for everyone? Tell us what brings you here."

"Dean- this doesn't concern your friends-"

"No, this foolishness ends now. It concerns everyone, so speak."

Malachi gathered himself in a great show of self-control and patience, but it only made Simon's hair stand on end.

"Sam's decision to go into Hell was beyond foolish. It's given Azathunn power beyond measure."

Molly stood mute – the words said many things to her, and she sensed that her world was about to change once again.

"If you're not here to say goodbye to Sam-" Dean said.

"Goodbye? He's worse than gone."

"Malachi, this is Sam's funeral. Angel or no, get lost."

And with that, Malachi was gone, and Molly's breath with him.

"You said Sam wasn't the first hunter you'd met?" Dean asked calmly, waiting for her to reply.  
"Turns out there's more than just monsters and demons in this world." He paused, seeing her face. "I'm so sorry."

Simon's hope that this odd chapter of his life would soon be over vanished as quickly as Malachi had.

"Mr. Winchester, what have you awakened?" Molly asked as the stars twinkled on overhead.


	3. Winchester to Slaughter

_October 1, 1874 – Memphis, Tennessee_

Dean awoke the next morning at 5:19 a.m., as he did every day, the moment Hell had come to his family in Lawrence twenty-four years earlier. He was in the large upstairs bedroom Molly had given him. It had the same slanted walls as his office and bedroom in Salina once had, and the same small window, which he kept closed. In the corner of the room was a simple Shaker chair that held his jacket and pants. Simon had loaned him a vest of blue brocade, but that wasn't Dean any longer; it hung unused in the closet. By his bed was a small table, simple, like the chair.

On the night table he kept what had been slowly accumulating there all his life. A notebook and a pen were his oldest possessions (now improved on with a silver-inlaid fountain pen, a gift from Simon). Beside that was a small gold amulet on a leather cord, Molly's first gift to him when he took over the brothel in Salina and created a new way of doing business, called the Impala Club. The amulet was an ugly thing, but it had proven valuable in keeping him safe.

 _If only Sam hadn't left it in the satchel when we went to the crossroads,_ he thought, looking at it from the pillow. In the satchel at the foot of the table was the newest item, a small jar of ashes he'd gathered but hadn't been able to bury away forever, a jar he kept hidden.

Waking up was followed by a daily mental checklist: _Where is Sam? Am I in Hell? What do I do today?_ Each day was remarkably similar now that the funeral was past, and so the answers were familiar.

 _1\. Where is Sam? In Hell, and there to stay. What I saw there wasn't even Sam anymore, it was something with yellow eyes, all fire and no heart. 2. Am I in Hell? No. It looks like Molly's house. Hell was ice and fire, both. 3. What do I do today?_  
  
Sometimes the third question waited until Molly came by and knocked, or the aromas of brewing coffee and sizzling breakfast ham could wend their way up the staircase and lure him down. Sometimes, he fell asleep again, and dreamed of Sam, fiery dreams that left him spent, terrified at the passion and the intensity of his desire for a brother, dead or not.

***

"What do I do today?" he asked himself that Saturday, standing at the window after answering the first two questions "In Hell" and "No."

"You need to know how things stand now, Dean," said Tez, standing there in a tidy, reserved black coat and the clothing of a surgeon. Dean jumped in shock, and then grimaced.

"Please let me be dreaming."

"I could speak to you in your dreams, if you prefer-" Tez said calmly.

"Stay out of them," Dean said quickly. "You said Malachi had a mission for me."

"He will explain what Heaven has planned. Now that Sam is gone, the Recurrence is-"

"Stop. Go back and explain that again as if I mattered in all this."

"You matter, Dean. You were a forgotten legend until 25 years ago, you and your brother. Azathunn found you by accident – even I didn't know you really existed."

"And you didn't stop him from burning people alive? Before all this got started? What was he doing in Lawrence anyway?"

"We divided our world – I didn't think he could come here. He found your mother, and then Sam, still inside her, and his soul. He found half of a legend we'd almost forgotten. Even Lucifer and Michael, so much younger, had forgotten you were here."

Dean had his head in his hands. _Saturday was always a good day, but not this one,_ he thought.

"Everything you've faced has been his effort to bring an end to you both. You and Sam are the key to everything. You made a promise to God."

Dean's eyes rolled, behind his hands. "The God? Or you-god?" he asked.

"God, Dean. All that is."

"And did God send you? Does he hate me this much?"

"He doesn't speak to us." There was just a tinge of regret in his voice, regret tempered by an eternity of life, and it made Dean look up. "Not since we turned our backs on him."

"Let me guess – you promised God you wouldn't haunt the humans.

Tez stared at him so long and so angrily that Dean actually bit his lip in embarrassment.

"The promise we made to Him we also broke. We walked away from each other and tore the world in two. When God's new children appeared, we came to them and they followed us. We divided them as well."

"I thought Lucifer made the demons."

"You see, Dean, you're not so slow. The angels tell many tales and none is better at lying than Lucifer. He can distort human souls, but not create new demons – only Azathunn can do that. But Lucifer and Michael made the same mistake as we had, as _you_ have, and they were offered the same choice. They promised God their lives, but they turned against each other instead of turning away from each other as we did. They enlisted humanity to take sides and fight their war with them. Our quarrel became their war, and they made it yours."

"And what were Sam and I supposed to do?" Dean asked wearily, wishing Molly would knock or he'd wake up in some other room one day, _a room where demi-gods don't appear before dawn to men still in their underdrawers - that would be ideal._ "No, wait. Let me get some coffee first."

***

Dean returned to his room with a cup of coffee, getting an odd glance from Simon on the way back. He closed the door carefully and saw Tez standing at the night table. When Tez turned, he was holding the amulet, and he had the same sad expression on his face as when Dean first revealed it a year before.

"So that's him?" Dean asked.

"This? No, this is how he became – deformed and twisted. He was beautiful once. Where did you get this, Dean?"

"Molly gave it to me."

"I need to speak to her. She is a very interesting woman."

"Oh believe me, you don't know the half of it."

"She has no fear."

Dean nodded at the assessment; he hadn't considered it that way, but it was true.

"We have fear, you and Michael and I."

"Let a man have his coffee before you compare him to an Archangel."

"Do you know the story of Cain and Abel?" Tez continued, undeterred.

"Sure. Cain killed Abel in the field. Abel was too much for him. Cain was, I don't know, jealous of Abel's inside track with God. Then he lied about the murder and God sent him wandering off with a mark on his head."

"Your grasp of theology is astonishing," Tez said, shaking his head to clear it.

"Hey, I've read the Bible. You're not in it."

"We are though, Dean, all of us."

Dean's eyes went to the line across Tez's face, a red mark like blazing war paint when he'd been his true self, now a port-wine slash across his brown skin.

"I'm not Cain," Dean said defensively.

"No Dean. You're his brother."

***

Dean splashed water onto his face, over and over again, but Tez didn't go away, nor did the impact of his words, or the powerful voice that seemed to ring through Dean's head.

"You and Samuel were asked to set the world right, but now that will never happen. You failed, just like we did, just like Lucifer and Michael failed."

"Stop it," Dean begged, pressing the damp towel to his face to blot out the world. He started laughing and couldn't stop. When he did, he was furious.

"I've heard that all my life – you did it wrong, you aren't good enough, you failed – and except for that one time Sam said it, I never once believed it was true."

"You aren't aware; you come back, Sam comes back, until the world is set right."

"So why can't I save Sam?"

"I wanted you to, but it's too late, now. I knew you wouldn't quit, so I gave you the chance. You went to Hell twice and failed both times – failed to save your parents, and failed to save Sam from being turned into a demon. Now that you've buried his ashes, you need to put him behind you, and stay alive. Azathunn won't come back for you."

"This is why you were so against us going into Hell in the first place. But you could have stopped us."

Tez was shaking his head. "No, I can't overturn your free will. Sam chose to go in because he thought he could be stronger. He thought he was better. He loved you more."

"Wait…" Dean's mind was working now that the coffee and cold water had cleared it. Sam was on his mind, as usual - Sam the determined hunter who'd taught him everything he knew about the supernatural. Sam didn't really think he was better at it. And Dean _knew_ with utter certainty that he loved Sam more.

"You can do this yourself; you'll have to," Tez continued.

"That's flattering. That's exactly what I would say, as a matter of fact. Even knowing that I'd failed twice, I would still think I could fix it all. And I'd be lying to myself."

His brain worked faster now. Something Tez said wasn't right. It was comforting, but muffling the truth that lay far down.

"I know one thing," Dean said after a moment. "If I really were Abel, I would _not_ let Sam take my life with a jawbone. He'd have a fight on his hands."

Tez was silent, but his face was stricken.

Dean's stomach was tight. He didn't like the way his brain was putting together the last year of his life, the things that Tez had told him and the things he'd seen in Hell.

 _If I ever was in Hell,_ he dared to think.

It was too much to consider, the scope of the betrayal Tez had carried out, mixed with the hope that Sam's soul was still there somewhere, and maybe his mother's or his father's too.

_...And Tez kept me from saving them?_

He collected his anger and funneled it into his fingers, which twitched to have a shotgun in them, for all the good it would do against a god.

"Before we exorcised the demons in Belleville," Dean asked in as neutral a tone as possible, "they told us they'd been looking for us for years. The demon in Creve Coeur said the same thing before Kearney exorcised him. The one who made our deal, the one with yellow eyes, he said it too. But no one knew until Azathunn found Sam and killed our parents."

"He was always curious though. Finding Sam was an accident."

"But you didn't know for sure either until I walked into your club in Memphis a year and half ago. So when you sent me to Hell for six months…"

"It was your chance to see how you can't win. I knew you wouldn't give up unless you had at least one chance."

"And you gave me another six months, which felt more like a few hours." Dean was pursuing a thought that was about to burst out.

"You begged me for a second chance to save Sam," Tez said in pitying voice.

Dean was pale now, digging his nails into the windowsill where he stood looking out over the large yard and the grand homes around them, an address made possible by Simon's wealth. His mind raced.

_Calm down, Dean. Get free._

"Who knew Hell would be exactly the way I pictured it, and Sam exactly as I was afraid he would be," Dean said with false joviality. "Or that my parents would both be there, waiting to be disappointed in me."

When he turned, Tez was gone.

"You fucking coward. You can't even lie well. At least I learned how to do that."

***

Molly was downstairs, uncharacteristically quiet; Simon was nowhere to be seen. She sat silently across from Dean as he ate his meager breakfast, then stopped him as he got up from the breakfast table.

"I've had enough, really. Stop trying to nurse me. Save it for the hospital where they need it."

"I do not interfere in other people's lives," she said, all trace of calmness gone.

It was an odd start for a conversation, and for her especially. Dean knew what it was, and had seen her avoid it for days, even as Simon gave him looks like he'd gotten from the respectable folk in Salina and St. Louis when they found out he owned a brothel. It was the same look Sam had given him when he learned about the men Sal provided for Dean, every month for all those years. It was a look of disgust and shame, a look that allowed no pity, and from Sam alone it had hurt. Dean's face burned each time Simon looked at him that way, not because of Simon, but because he remembered Sam turning from him, that expression fixed on his face.

"I can't explain it, Molly. Even after we knew."

"When was that?"

"When the club burned. It was the fire demon. Worse than the usual demon. It knew us, and it knew our parents."

Molly crossed herself. "It was lying."

"No, it wasn't. It was speaking the truth to hurt us. Sam is my brother. I lost him when I was five, and found him again, and I love him."

"Well it matters little, now that you've angered God. You're making mistakes faster than I thought possible. And the man who disappeared-"

"Malachi? He's harmless."

"He is an angel of the Lord, you said so yourself."

"Well, yeah, but –"

"If I'd stayed with you when you left Salina, I could have kept you two in line. You so rarely do the smart thing."

"I don't know, Molly. I've been Dean all my life. I do what seems right."

"Where is Samuel?" She hadn't asked it in all these weeks, but now everything was fair game.

"Dead. In Hell." His lips tightened, twisting with the honesty of that awful truth.

"How?" Her voice was short and tight. She restrained every emotion so that Dean would speak.

"We made a deal with a demon. The one that killed our parents, the one from Salina. Go in, get one parent out, come back, no strings."

Molly leaned over the table and slapped Dean hard across the face, then pressed her lips tight and sat down again. He sat in shock. After a moment, she asked her next question.

"How could that have gone right?"

"The fire demon - it came and took Sam. It was supposed to take me."

She gaped at him as if he'd only just now lost his mind and started babbling.

"I tried to get him out, Molly. Or I thought I did."

"How on earth could you-"

"That doctor acquaintance of yours? He's not what you think."

"Is he an angel too?"

"Not exactly."

***

_October 3, 1874 – Memphis, Tennessee_

Dean had been on the riverfront all day the day before, watching boats head up and down the Mississippi, some all the way from New Orleans, their crews happily jumping ship as Memphis quarantine officers looked the other way – fever season was over, or so people said. The steamboats spun their paddles and made slow progress upstream.

Dean watched the boats load and unload cotton, and he felt nothing – not calm, not anger. _Why am I not angry?_ He walked back home past the fairgrounds, where the Ulks order was readying their floats for the Fall Festival parade. _That I'd like to see before I go._  
  
***

Dean was packed before Simon returned from work. Everything fit into one pack – his journal, Sam's journal, the jar of ashes, the one suit he owned now. He added two clean shirts, and some of Molly's cookies.

The amulet was gone.

"Tez. Bring it back."

Nothing. No sudden appearance. He could hear Molly and Simon arguing downstairs.

_What do I do today? I find Sam._

It occurred to him that if he took Tez at his word, he might have a real destiny, and that made him laugh.

 _Abel never spoke in the Bible. Abel had no destiny but to die and be a moral lesson. That's not me. It's just not me. Dean Winchester is not the moral of any story._  
  
"Why didn't I see it earlier?" he asked the room. Tez had never been to Hell; instead, it was exactly like Dean had pictured it. "A good trick, Tez. Very real."

_Of course I would trick myself. I'm good at it. And if I lie, then Tez lies._

He almost broke Sam's bottle jamming it into the bag.

"I'm not Abel, or Michael, or you, Tez. I'm Dean Winchester and I have a brother, and I'm going to find him."

Dean was ready. When he came downstairs with his pack, Molly was not the least surprised, but Simon was.

"Mr. Winchester, Dean… you are welcome to stay in our home; I'm sorry if I gave the wrong-"

"Thank you, Simon, but I can't. I'd tell you to take care of Molly, but she can do that just fine herself."

"That's why I married her; as an equal," Simon said.

"We were never her equal," Dean said softly, looking her in the eye, then left the room.

Molly followed him to the door, but he closed it behind him with a terse "Take care," blocking her out of his troubles.

***

The crowds filled the side streets and lined all of Front Street, come to watch the parade and eager for it to start. They were even more eager to celebrate the end of another yellow fever summer. Just as the parade turned the corner and headed toward him, Dean saw Malachi approaching.

"You cannot leave now," said the angel, looking every one of his fifty years.

"I can, though, Malachi," Dean insisted.

"The Garrison is counting on you. Michael knows you've been found."

"Watch the parade – it's a _parade_ , you know? Try to remember when you were human. Do you want me to buy you some spun sugar?" Dean replied, his hospitality now bitter. "A taste of all the sweet memories I have of you and the other angels manipulating us, moving us into place on your chessboard."

"I helped you once," Malachi rebutted.

"And then what? You decided to give up on humanity?"

"I cannot disobey my orders. And Tez is greater than all of us, even Michael."

"One day, you'll learn free will. Can't come soon enough."

"That would be the end of Heaven!"

"Like I said, can't come soon enough. Look! Loyal soldiers, just like you," Dean said, smiling coldly as he pointed to the War float gliding by on a carriage drawn by a team of ten horses, a military color guard behind it. The salute to the Glorious Dead took the form of an enormous Confederate officer of paper maché, and behind it was a single black horse with black plumes pulling a simple hearse draped in black bunting – the coffin of the unknown soldier.

"And there you are," Malachi replied stiffly, pointing out the coffin to Dean. "Forever unknown."

Behind this spectacle came a float that was meant to celebrate the harvest, but the long drought had brought a poor crop and raised the cost of all available food. The golden sheaves of grain sagged in meager bundles or had been chewed off by hungry horses at the fairground. All that remained were bales of inedible cotton and tobacco, and a few bushels of early crabapples.

"That, right there, looks like Famine, not feast. Ah, and Pestilence, right on cue," said Dean.

The approaching float had spoiled the mood of the crowd, who loudly jeered it. The organizers and city leaders had hoped for that exact reaction, a rally against the fear that had gripped Memphis all summer as yellow fever claimed life after life. The disease had kept Molly busy, even after she'd found Dean fever-ridden and ruined in the hospital. Now though, the disease was to be put out of mind for another year.

The large, skeletal figure on the float was ludicrous, its hollow sockets and toothy grin a far-too-gentle version of the yellow fever corpses that had littered the back alleys and bayous of the city that summer.

"They should make Yellow Jack more bloated, more… yellow. Maybe add some black vomit," Dean whispered in Malachi's ear.

Malachi was about to respond when a scream overwhelmed the boos and hisses of the crowd. The people nearest the street rushed back from something but could not get back far enough in the crush of people. Dean and Malachi fought their way forward through the crowd to find a woman and her child trampled and then crushed under the wheels of the float.

Malachi looked at the scene with little concern, but Dean was remembering a woman and her sons torn apart by hellhounds on an icy winter morning in Illinois. Over those bodies stood a beautiful woman whose eyes glowed red, a demon they hadn't stopped, and three people he and Sam couldn't save.

"Her son ran out - tried to touch my horse and then he fell under the carriage. I couldn't stop!" the horrified driver was trying to explain to anyone who would listen.

"The four horsemen came early," Dean said to Malachi, who at those words for the first time looked truly unnerved. "I need to find my brother," Dean muttered, and headed off through the crowd, leaving the angel behind.

***

_Early October 1874 - South of Memphis, Tennessee_

Blood followed Dean down the back roads, as if Death himself were on his tail, driving him across the landscape of low hills and moss-hung trees, some with ropes still knotted from a sturdy branch to hang the deserters of a war not yet out of mind. The river was never in sight but close on his right hand as it wound its way south too, taking its time. He avoided most towns to avoid the people who filled them, people who looked at him with dislike and pity, and wished him on his way.

The first blood he saw was his own, blood to feed the black coach he was driving. He gave it unwillingly as he had once before, not to a broken pane of glass, but when the new horse reared up and jackknifed the carriage, crushing his left hand against the splinterboard. He cursed long and loud and still made it well into Mississippi that day with one hand bandaged and throbbing.

Dean was not predisposed to reading omens, but fire spoke more clearly to him than bloody accidents of his own making. That night, he needed provisions and had the money to pay for them and still he kept going, not even looking at the column of smoke and sparks, black and gold against the night sky, a fire three buildings strong and growing.

The next day, he found himself cutting a straight line across a landscape of curls and twisting berms, the river's playground over millennia. When he reached Mound Bayou, he left the black carriage glistening in the sun and went into the store to get what he needed. The talk among the customers was of a fire just to the north, by Sherard, and the lives lost when it spread from the hotel to the adjoining buildings. Seventeen souls, the shopkeeper said.

Dean was ragged now, inside and out, a far cry from the man who'd hosted the powerful and the connected at Sal's old brothel, and in Mound Bayou he could have passed almost unnoticed but for the crowd gathering by the grandest vehicle they'd ever seen.

Dean left the shop only to find his coach surrounded by curious folk, and decided to drive them off with the tale of a demon who took souls on lonely roads, and how he and his brother had outwitted her and stolen her coach, but not saved the souls of poor Lucille Lorimer and her young boys.

"The hellhounds got them, ripped their souls from them, and you can still hear the dogs out there, looking for me," he concluded, letting his voice fade into the silence.

The crowd had drawn away from the coach and from him in fear that his insanity would leap onto them. He tossed his purchases inside the coach, climbed up to the bench and whipped the horse into action.

"That woulda never happened!" yelled one kid, a skinny boy of fourteen whose father struck him across the face to silence him.

"Which way to New Orleans?" Dean asked, and no one answered.

The man with his son pinned under his arm tipped his head down the road.

"Past Lake Mary, down into New Roads, then you're in Louisiana. Get goin'."

That man knew his own bad omens when he saw them, and he had only a year left on the deal he'd made with a man and a woman whose eyes glowed red. He could swear they'd walked off toward a grand black coach that night, leaving him with his son alive again in his arms.

***

_October 5, 1874 - Southwestern Mississippi_

The lake lay before him, sparkling in the sunrise. It curved and curled like a hook, a strand of the Mississippi come unraveled and left long ago to its own fate. He could see the river a mile beyond it, but the lake was dark and calm and clear, all blues and greens – and he needed to wash. The long summer had not made the deep water warm enough, but he was able to wade in through the shore weeds and sink down well over his head. The coach and his bundle of clothing were still there when he resurfaced.

 _The pond in the Tennessee hills was cold like this, and Sam was so warm against me in that damned cold water._ Dean rubbed his face and head vigorously, then climbed out, willing his memories away. He had no more clean clothes, only black pants and a vest of fading grandeur and coarse shirts, yellowing and road-stained. His hair matted down where he left it after swimming and clung to him, stale and stinking of backwaters.

_That bastard Tez kept me from you with my own visions of Hell. Gonna find a way, Sam. Get in for real this time._

He rode on, his anger shifting from Tez to himself for ever believing he was really in Hell, two utterly different mirages of Hell that had his failure as their common element.

________________________________________

_I am Samuel Winchester. My mother Mary killed herself and would have killed me too, if Dean hadn't come in… or was that Dad?_

Sam's mind skipped and he panicked, huddling with his arms around his legs, all drawn up tight. The room they left him in when he was not being torn apart by Azathunn was so very…

_Normal? I always thought Hell would be my nightmares. It's so much worse._

"Let's begin your reeducation, Samuel Winchester, the preacher had said months ago – the preacher all in black, with yellow eyes.

 _He doesn't smile like a preacher should,_ Sam thought.

Sam began and ended each session in excruciating agony, consumed by fears unlike any he'd known before. He could feel his body being pulled apart, and his soul stripped away, memory after memory, as he tried to hold onto them, until found only fog and emptiness in his mind.

_Hell is insanity, and loss. I will not lose my family. Not again.  Not Dean._

Each time he started over, he had forgotten more.

________________________________________

_October 7, 1874 – New Roads, Louisiana_

When he crossed into Louisiana, the countryside was unchanging, small settlements one after another where he spent one night, never two. Often he could hear a fight break out in the next room, or the wailing of a woman who'd lost her man over the roll of dice and a sharp word. The town of New Roads, Louisiana, gave him no new directions, only a sign pointing southward to New Orleans.

He stopped at that sign, and rested himself on the bench, still unwilling to step inside the coach, and dozed off.

"The faster way is east," said a young woman, undaunted to be alone and addressing a strange man on the road, and undeterred by her own disheveled and slightly deranged appearance.

Dean looked at her, judging her motives, but nothing obvious emerged. She appeared thin and undernourished, like many of the people he'd met far off the path of civilized society.

He looked at the signpost where she was pointing, and snorted. Fate had, at the very least, a sense of humor.

"Slaughter, Louisiana? Well, that does sound like a fast way to reach an end."

"I mean to say it's a faster way to go if you want to reach the city of New Orleans and you ain't got a riverboat ticket. Though why you don't sell that coach and buy a ticket…"

"How did you know?"

"Everyone coming from up north wants to get through here fast as can be. Local folk believe life can be just as good when you set still and let it move around you, but a man on a carriage like this is going to New Orleans."

"East it is then."

"Take me along with you."

"Sorry, my dear, I am not a taxicab."

"I can give you what you need," she offered, lowering the front of her blouse. "I know a gentleman when I see one, and I'm on my way to New Orleans myself."

"I have nothing but the greatest concern for you," Dean lied, "but you won't make money with those wares," he concluded more honestly.

"Then take me with you anyway," she said, pulling out a gun from her dress folds and aiming carefully at Dean's head.

"To Slaughter it is then." He frowned. "No, no, get in the coach. I'll drive," he said wearily.

***

Rather than face her continuing complaints, Dean asked, "When we get there, what do you plan to do? Thank me? Shoot me? Pay me for the trouble?"

"Trouble? I've shown you how to get where you want to go, and you could have had a taste as well."

"Can I make a suggestion? Strictly as a former brothel owner-" Dean asked, leaning back to look in the coach window at her.

She was silent, at last, unable to reply, her mouth hung open in disbelief.

"I _was_ , once. Met a few girls like you. You think you'll find a place in a high-class house, make money, catch the eye of a gentleman."

"I caught your eye."

"Like a bent nail."

"I have a _gun_ , you know."

"You'll end up at the worst place, used by the guards and their criminal friends. Shared around, night after night until one of them gives you a sickness or hits you too hard."

"Is that what you did at your place?"

"Never. But where I worked first, I saw it. I didn't stop it, but I saw it happen. The woman who ran the place let the best girls in, told the others to come by the back door -"

"-and work our way up," she said, finishing a sentence she'd heard before. A realization was sinking in for the young woman. "We don't have to stop in Slaughter, we can just go on to New Orleans," she said. "It's not more than a day or two. You can find what you need there."

"And what I need is?"

"To find something you lost. I can see you're as raggedy as me, so it must've been somethin' big an' important. There's places down there grant wishes, bring the dead back to life I hear. Voodoo black magic."

"You get out in Slaughter - that was our agreement," Dean said coldly.

They rode on in silence for nearly two hours.

***

_Slaughter, Louisiana_

The young woman stepped from the carriage without any grace, her shoes still covered in the dirt of the road she'd been walking before her ride came along.

"And you sir? What's the name of the gentleman who thinks I won't be a madam of my own house inside of a year?"

Dean paused, unable to think of a name other than his own. Aliases were Sam's job; he even seemed to _like_ making them up. Dean's one effort had yielded "Remy" and so he blurted that out.

"Remy? You'll fit in well down there. My name is Bellaire."

"I doubt that very much."

"It's Alice Bell, none of your concern," she snapped. "A girl needs a name. One that works."

"Bellaire, then. Take care of yourself."

He left Alice on a side road just outside of Slaughter, still holding her gun, and met her again much later in New Orleans. In between, she died.

 


	4. How Do We Get Back Home?

_October 1874 – New Orleans, Lousiana_

A haze hovered over New Orleans, and rumors floated along the canals all summer, stories of painful deaths and disappearances that might have been yellow fever, or cholera, or something new. In October, the heat finally broke, and the city became livable again, and Dean Winchester rode into town in a demon coach, looking worse than the demons he'd stolen it from.

He was unpresentable in any respectable part of town, but he knew his way around the disreputable world at its fringes. New Orleans was more dangerous than even Kansas City in that respect, and it suited his dark mood. The soft tropical air did not agree with him though; he was far from his prairie, far from Sam's mountains and into a new and unknown world.

He found lodging for a day or two at a time, moving on when word of his rough questioning got back to the wrong people. In no time, he was out of options, out of money, and, until he found himself on the levee road staring at the hitchhiker, he was almost out of hope.

***

_Chalmette_

He pushed the horse along between abandoned lowlands and stagnant channels, although it badly needed a shoe and they both needed a meal. He passed a few faded mansions long past their glory, and some that retained a hint of their golden age before the war. And there, southeast of the city, he saw the man on the road, and for a second he thought he might avoid going to Hell – and in the next second it occurred to him he might have already arrived there.

"I don't like what you're doing, Dean. Going searching for Death. You might just find him, and trust me, you wouldn't know what to do."

"Sam, no…." There was little else to say. The holy water, if he had any left, would be under the seat cushion in the coach. It wasn't possible that Sam was there, right there on the same road west of town.

_Demon. Ghost. Insanity. Great._

"Maybe if you gave me a ride, I could talk some sense into you."

Dean's head dropped into his hand, and after a brief hesitation, he responded, "Yeah. Sit here. I could use the company."

Sam didn't talk after that, but Dean did, getting his suspicions out in the open, his doubts about Sam, but not a word about what he was doing, what Sam had warned him about. As the light faded over the flat country, the mosquitos appeared by the hundreds, it seemed, tormenting the horse and Dean, but not one landed on Sam. It was strange, and Dean shivered. He could feel eyes watching him from the left and swung around to look at the house they were approaching. There was only one building on the left, only one this far out, but he didn't want to look at it. He tried averting his eyes, as if he were passing a graveyard, but the horse stopped in front of the long two-story structure with its odd central tower, like it had reached home.

"What do you think, Sam?" he asked, but Sam was gone.

***

The house he'd been avoiding was – wrong. It had something about it that was not sinister, exactly, but off, a mistake that he couldn't see in the structure, but could feel. It was a house that found itself full of evil but tried to put a mask over it. The tightly curtained windows and the row of first floor doors were familiar to him from an earlier time in his life. It was Sal's brothel in Kansas City, discreet but so clearly a place of business.

Dean got down off the carriage, his legs nearly buckling after the long day's ride.

If he was right, the madam of the house would be asleep, even now, at noon. Instead, a man emerged, a man who looked like he was above the task of throwing vagrants from the property.  
He was sizing Dean up, assessing how best to take him if it came to that.

"Remy Samuels, at your service," Dean called to him when he came closer, leading with his best smile.

"Mr. Samuels, you have arrived a bit early, but we want you to know that we welcome all guests at all hours."

In Dean's mind, the false cheer was familiar, a warning of what was coming, a tone he'd used himself to lull the unsuspecting.

"I need only to rest, and recover from the road."

"We are not an inn, Mr. Samuels."

"Then be what I need," Dean said harshly, waving a bill in the man's face. The man ignored it.

"Enter the door farthest from the coach house. We'll take care of the horse. And the coach."

Dean walked slowly up to the house, the two satchels weighing on him. As he set foot on the veranda, he saw it for a moment run down and boarded up, grey and lifeless, but he put this vision down to fatigue.

"Put the carriage back where she used to keep it," the guard said to the coachman who'd appeared.

***

Dean knew what to ask for, and got it – a room of his own, for a term. He'd had one or two rooms just like this in Salina, for weekend guests in his establishment, when he didn't have a full staff to accommodate. Sal had kept four rooms, one for her favorite governor, one just for Dean.

The next night, when the brothel was full of customers, Dean made his way downstairs in his cleanest attire. He was far less polished than the men who'd arrived from New Orleans. They were looking for a more enticing and elaborate experience outside the city ordinances and away from the prying eyes of the local police and the moralists.

He could not see anyone who looked like the madam of the house, but the women who worked there were a distinctive and valuable attraction – creole mixed-race women with a few freed slaves and northern immigrants to add variety.

"I need to speak to the woman of the house," Dean asked one of the unattended floorwalkers.

"Madam is not here. But she knows you've arrived and will speak with you when she is ready," said the woman, and moved on.

"And I need to go into town – bring my coach to the front."

"The coach is being repaired. Cleve will take you as far as the first bend, and you can walk to where you need to go."

"Walk?" Dean asked, shocked.

***

_Arabi_

Dean spent days in the small shops and back alleys of New Orleans' periphery, in Chalmette when the city itself refused to offer up anything truly sinful, and finally in Arabi. He choked on the stench of the slaughterhouses there. With each day he was more and more a wild-eyed presence, asking questions that made even those who dealt in death and magic become suspicious or afraid. They directed him away, toward some further address, a "better place" for his needs, and barred the doors when he left.

Leaving the brothel each day on foot, Dean spent hours looking through libraries of dark books, attics that contained a cursed object, or were haunted, according to the homeowners. He found nothing and no one that would take him into Hell. He finally drew the sigils and slit open his arm to pour blood on the flames at the center, but no demon came.

The Madam remained equally unavailable. There was a letter under his door at the end of the week, but it had only a street address on it. He went out the next afternoon, and his path took him back toward the bad end of Arabi, itself the bad end of the city.

He came at last to a small place unbothered by any other customers, or any other shops even, a street he wouldn't have gone down even with a loaded gun in his hand. Near the front counter of the shop a woman sat eating her dinner, picking meat from small bones, or bones from the little meat they held. The walls around her were lined with jars of bits and pieces, of things unknown, eyes, paws perhaps, and blood. A witch or a hunter would have a full basket when he left.

"Hello," Dean said. His smile faded under the weight of the place.

The woman looked at him and kept gnawing the meat off the bone. Fat dribbled down her chin. For all the fat she ate, Dean thought, she was terrifyingly thin. Her eyes were cold but intensely interested in this man before her.

"I need to find a way to get in." _To Hell_ , he added in his mind, wondering if he could trust his own mind any more.

"We all want that, cher. But our world has no doors from one room to another. Not for the likes of us." She chuckled softly and sighed, returning to the bone in her hand, worrying the gristle off with her teeth.

"Do you have anything?" he asked, no longer surprised that she spoke so easily of Hell.

"You can go to the crossroads, bury a picture and a piece of your skin and hope the demon comes."

"No demons."

"You want in but you want no demons?" She laughed heartily at the silliness of his request.

"I just need to get in. And back out," he added quickly before any wishes were granted.

"There's no meat on them – not the ones he brings me now," she lamented, staring at the tiny bone in her hand and ignoring Dean's desperation.

The bone was the short, thin forearm of some animal, an alligator, maybe. _I hope it's a 'gator,_ he thought.

"What you need is a way to make the door open from this side, and that's somethin' we can't do. That takes real power."

"How do I-"

"No, you don't have that kind of power. Not even the thing that touched you can do that. You shine, child. Have they told you that, the ones who can see it?"

"I've heard that, yes," Dean said, unsettled. He was beginning to think he was a lunatic taking advice from the truly insane, back in the house of the tarot reader in Tennessee, overcome with the fumes of cat piss.

"You _shine_ …" she said again softly, dreamily, wiping the drips of fat from her face with the back of her hand. The little bone landed in the middle of the plate, next to a few others she'd picked clean. "They say all the saints shine like that…"

"Yes or no?" Dean asked, eager to be gone.

"I think you know the price."

"Whatever it costs."

"You pay that later. Give me fifty dollars now."

"Fifty?!"

"You won't need your money soon enough. Customers don't come back. Best to leave the cash with me and let me make use of it. Buy me some with more meat on their bones."

Her eyes, at first greenish in the daylight from the window had become darker as the sun set, orange flecks from the cracked window glittering in them.

"Are you a demon?" he asked, ready for either response.

"No, but I hear I will be if I keep on the path my feet are taking me down. We all will be, given time enough in Hell. I chose my side and no going back."

She cleared her food aside, its rich scent lingering in Dean's nose, a memory of barbecue he'd had once in Kansas City.

"Are you sure I can't get you a bowl?" she offered. "So inhospitable of me."

Dean's stomach answered for him. "A small one," he said, regretting it instantly.

She disappeared into the back of the darkening shop for a moment, leaving the sunset's light to play through the jars of soft meat-like chunks, of dried – _are those fangs?_

"Here you go, cher." She set before him a small bowl of oily brown stew.

When he hesitated, she turned to a box on the shelf behind her and removed something. She held forward on both palms a small object wrapped in coarse red cloth and asked him, "Are you sure you know the price?"

"You said fifty."

"That's to take it off my hands. That's because you need it more than I do. So many things to kill, so many doors to open between you and the one you want. But do you know the price you have to pay?"

 _Ending up in Hell is a high enough price,_ Dean thought. "I do," he said confidently.

"You don't, or you wouldn't say you do. But you're young and foolish and I dare say in love, and I need this thing gone."

She lifted the torn cloth to reveal a dull, tarnished knife, unremarkable but for the way the end of the blade hooked back viciously. It had a handle of stone, pitted where the jewel inlays had been dug out over millennia, but no other markings.

"Won't you take it, feel the weight?" she asked, and Dean stopped his hand, already reaching for it.

"What's the price?"

"Fifty dollars," she said, watching him hopefully, and smiling in a way that turned his stomach.

Dean took the knife and the woman relaxed visibly.

"Use it well and use it twice or you'll be ruing my advice. It will kill whatever you need to kill."

"The price?" Dean asked again, feeling the small knife in his hand, hardly a weapon at all.

"A bargain. Three for two – you kill two, it kills three. Your stew is getting cold. No more meat till Saturday, he says."

Dean looked down at the stew in a room now nearly dark, hoping he wasn't seeing what he thought he saw in the bowl. He shoved it aside and backed away from her, throwing the last of his bills on the table.

"I am forever in your debt, sir," the woman said.

Dean fumbled behind him for the door, holding the hooked blade between himself and the woman, trying not to vomit. _It was teeth, human teeth and part of a jaw… I can't be- God how do I get home?_

***

Dean ran down the street from the shop, wavering finally at the corner where he fought to forget what he'd seen, then vomited. There was nothing to come up but the whiskey he'd had in place of lunch and supper, and again just before he entered the shop. He dropped the knife on the street where it thumped softly in a cloud of dust and felt the earth around it again. After a minute or so, Dean knelt to pick it up.

He wrapped it again in the red cloth, and it sliced through, exposing the dull grey tip; he wound the cloth around again to make it invisible, to make it safe.

***

At the crossroads, Dean turned toward the brothel, out along the dark road to Chalmette and the brothel, the only place he had now. The sun faded fast into the autumn night, and the mosquitos returned.

He heard an approaching carriage long before it emerged from the dark, a black horse trotting and wheels cutting into the ruts. It came from where he was headed, and it was _his_ coach, he soon saw.

The door opened quickly when it stopped in front of him, and out stepped the young woman he'd left on her own not long before, who'd been invited in by kindly-looking people in Slaughter, out of the dark night and into a warm home where they fed her, drugged her and bound her. When she tried to escape, they beat her past the point of life and left her body bruised and bloodied, only to have it restored by the black smoke, which had made many deals in Slaughter already.

When she rose from the woodpile where they planned to burn her, she snapped their necks and turned her eyes toward New Orleans, and Dean Winchester, and the coach she'd lost to him nearly two years before.

***

"Bellaire?"

"Mr. Remy," she nodded, stepping graciously from the coach in her long dress.

She was the same Alice Bell he'd let into his coach less than a week before, but now clean, dressed and perfumed, and not at all rough around the edges. She had a poise that came with time, a calculating maturity that helped her decide just how far and how fast to push him.

_Not the same Alice Bell at all._

"I followed you down, you see," she added brightly, "but I knew we'd meet again. We move in the same circles, do we not?"

"How did you get my…"

" _My_ coach?" she corrected. "Well – the woman of the house sent me out to look for you, seeing as you'd only paid for the week past and then left without your belongings. She worries about you."

"You work there?"

"I've only just arrived myself, still trying to settle in. But it seems from the other girls that I'll be quite welcome."

"How…"

"Get in, Mr. Remy. We can catch up. Find out what you've been up to. I have a story to tell you that you won't be able to tear yourself away from."

***

_Chalmette_

Bellaire settled in next to Dean as the coach rolled down the levee road past the abandoned mansions.

"Your face-" Dean said, seeing the large purplish bruise clearly in the lamplight of the compartment.

"Ran into some trouble back up in Slaughter. Not the first time. I can handle myself pretty well, and I must say, this meat is tough." She slapped her arms as if to show her fighting prowess. "But let's be honest with each other. You owe me something."

Dean raised an eyebrow, but her face became cold.

"You took him from me. And while I'm so happy you've lost your true love as well, I just can't call us even."

Dean leaned back in disbelief.

"It's not strictly according to the rules, but let's talk about your soul, Dean, and how it could be saved."

Her eyes flashed red in the dim carriage interior, swallowed up in the black of a moonless delta night. Dean went for his new knife.

"Stop," she said forcefully, immobilizing him. "That a fool like you is even still alive amazes me. You have the one thing you need to save your brother and you're going to kill _me_ with it?"

"You're a demon."

"Is it coming back now, Dean?"

"Belleville. You killed Lucille and her sons."

The demon waved that aside. "They made their deal. There are rules. Mostly, I follow them. But you killed someone too. You sent my man back to Hell after we'd worked so hard on getting out of the pit. A job topside is just about the best way to make a living.

"You gonna kill me?

"I very _very_ much want to. And _wanting_ things is the way to become a demon, so you're quite far along that road yourself. But no, I won't kill you – you have to do that yourself. I'm going to tell you how to get your heart's desire, Dean."

***

_Long past midnight, mid-October, 1874_

The choice Bellaire laid out was clear – Sam was his to rescue, but the knife was his only way in.

"What do you get in return?" Dean forced out, his anger interfering with his ability to speak while pressed against the glass.

"What we get is of very little concern to you. Now, Dean, listen to me. Carefully," she added, as he struggled against her control. "That thing that's after you – the fire? -- it's taking over Hell, dethroning us from our rightful place. We ran Hell."

"Sounds like you have a revolution on your hands."

"Upstart yellow-eyes with their new god – they will overturn everything we've built – there's even talk of taking on Heaven. We have business interests, Dean, and this religious persecution is interfering with the collecting of souls; a war would be worse."

"I'm not sure I would care," Dean snapped.

"You care because all of humanity and all of your precious souls are going to be wiped out in this war. You _care_ , Dean, because your brother is being turned into one of Azathunn's yellow-eyed warriors while you mope around up here."

"Tell me one thing," Dean said, "and tell the truth." She looked at him, her eyes fiery red.

He asked Bellaire the question that had been eating into him since Memphis: "Have I ever been in Hell?"

"If you had been, you wouldn't be here now. You'd be in the tower, and the demons would be at your soul like the mosquitos drain blood in this forsaken backwater."

***

Dean woke in his room to the unmistakable sound of hellhounds, and wished now he'd never opened the window. They weren't exactly visible but what he heard was enough to scar him.

His mind swam with the words of his long coach ride. The nightmare of life without Sam finally paled in comparison to this new nightmare he found himself in, trapped in a brothel where the men and the women of Louisiana and far beyond came to seek pleasure at any cost.

Bellaire was no doubt claiming souls again as she had for many years, but Dean still couldn't figure out why she wanted him to get to Sam out of Hell. As soon as she said it, he was against the idea, until his mind corrected him – _wait, I do want to go to Hell_. _Tez would be against it, and Malachi, and Molly and Simon. Sam most of all._

________________________________________

Hell embraced Sam Winchester, the favorite of its new Lord. And this new Lord, Azathunn, gave his favorite over to the one who followed him first, his apostle Azazel. Sam had no way to stop them, and so his soul was torn up, piece by piece. He held tight to each thread as they unraveled him, watching it burn through his fingers.

 _I'm… I'm Sam. My mother killed herself because something found her, and found me, not even born – an old and awful power, an all-consuming fire. Before I set her free from Hell, she called me remarkable. Dad is here, waiting for the angels to release him soon. My brother, is … I don't know where you are, Dean. You said you'd come._  
  
The panic rose again, and then the pain cut deep into him, and they ripped another memory from him, his last memory of days spent with the Widow in her cabin, learning the lore she'd learned. He knew she'd died, burnt to ash like his father, the very same day, but why she mattered – that was gone forever.

Over the next year, Mary vanished slowly from his mind. He didn't visit John any more either; there hadn't been a point before, even less of one now – Azazel's exact words. His time with Dean grew sketchy, and even his own sense of self faded in the most terrifying ways. But he knew who Azazel was, and Azathunn, the Lord of all the yellow-eyed demons. They wanted him alive, a demon for the throne of Hell, and he resisted them for so long.

________________________________________

 

_Sam? You there? I can't figure any other way but to come in after you. There's no way in, not even Tez, and he wasn't lying about that. He won't go in, says he can't. But I know how._

Bellaire knocked at Dean's door shortly after the hounds stopping growling outside.

"Are you planning on staying around much longer? I could have someone help you with the… process," she said, her impatience taking over.

"That's my only way in? Killing myself?"

"What did you expect? You have to die to go to Hell."

"Then why do I need this?" Dean asked, holding up the knife as Bellaire backed away. "Why not just take me in yourself?"

"There's a moratorium on deals with you," she said. That's why you can't get into Hell. It's why not a single demon has come to you in all the time since Sam was taken. Didn't you wonder about that?"

"And this knife?"

"I have no idea why it works, but no demon will touch that knife. You go to Hell, find Sam and stop the fire demon for good. The knife will send your soul there, I'm sure," and in that moment Dean realized she was taking as much of a gamble on this plan as he was.

"Why is a red-eyed demon on my side?"

"Oh Dean, I'm _not._ Your naiveté is charming. You and your brother back together – that's the one thing that fire demon fears, and if you have to die for killing him, well, then I get _everything_ I want."

The red light that shone in her eyes as she gloated cast no light on Dean's path.

***

_October 18, 1874_

Dean had strung the knife on a thin leather strap that ran in a tight knot around the handle and around his own neck. It lay against his chest, the point making small cuts if he wasn't cautious.

He was reading Sam's journal, struck once more by all the "NOs" that Sam had written as they headed toward Sikeston. As he turned the page of the last entry, a leaf fell out, and he recognized it – an herb Sam had gathered from along the roadside, something he'd used to slow the fire demon's first attack in Salina.

_Sam called it…._

Dean sought the name and it escaped him – he'd lost a gift from Sam, a memory that held Sam close. He cursed himself and begged the leaf to give him a hint.

"It's called bloodroot, Dean. We found a big patch in Zion Grove. And it didn't do anything but slow him down for a second, do you remember? And stop reading my journal."

Bellaire's man knocked on Dean's door and Sam was gone again, but Dean could smell him there still. "Get lost, Sam. I don't want you here for this," he said, looking around. Dean shoved the journal and the dried plant into his pocket along with the lamp oil he'd set aside.

He left the lamp burning in his room and joined Bellaire at the coach again – her coach, as it had always been. From the road, he looked up to see his window go dark as the lamp went out. Her footman opened the door of the coach.

"Who did this belong to, before you?" he asked the demon.

"A couple of circus performers. Fire-eaters. They made enough to buy a great coach and then asked for more. We made them famous, for a while, and then we fed them to the dogs. Seemed a shame to let the coach go to waste."

***

Bellaire sat close to him, her arm entwined with his, and chipped away at Dean's façade ever more as they rode toward town.

"What's the only selfless thing you've ever done?" she asked. When he hesitated, she cut into him. "Dig, Dean! Dig deep in that pathetic haystack of a life for one needle."

"I gave Molly… no. I tried to help the girls in…. " He fell silent. There was no ready answer.

"The one thing you ever did for anyone in this world was to save a ghost. The ghost of a girl, Dean, and a slave girl at that. Not even alive. That's _nothing_ , Dean. It's always all about _you_."

And then it came to him, the moment when he knew he loved Sam, and put Sam ahead of everything else: "I told Sam to save himself from the fire demon and let the rest burn."

"Well, that's charming. It really is. And look how he repays you – I bet he even promised to get Mommy and Daddy out and come back to you, his one true amour."

"Did you say you were on my side?" Dean asked, tired of the abuse.

"The Yellow-eyes are cowards, Dean. They fear Azathunn as much as they fear the Winchesters. They can't make deals with you either; none of us can, on Azathunn's orders. They can't have you both there, and if they lose Sam, their little cult goes back to obscurity and we forget about the Recurrence. It's only a superstition anyway. You can do this for the world, Dean. You can rescue Sam from Hell, and all you have to do is die. And do me one little favor."

"To help your civil war?"

"And because I want to see you suffer, Dean. I want things done to you that even I couldn't withstand. Azazel is the one who made the deal to take Sam in and keep you out; he won't be happy to see you," she said, smiling hopefully. "Just kill him before he kills you. Do we have a deal?"

***

Bellaire ignored Dean once he said yes, and instead talked of the Yellow-Eyed takeover, how Azazel had found a new Lord and been "elevated." Dean unobtrusively pushed a container of oil into the corner of the seat cushions and kept the other one in his pocket with the dried herbs. He recited the exorcism in his head, the strongest one they'd learned from Kearney in St. Louis.

 _Kearney was right, Sam. It wasn't a good idea to take the demon coach. He's a fanatic and a vigilante, but he was right._  
  
When they reached the docks, it was still dark, and the riverboat was not there. Bellaire opened the door and waved Dean out. He stepped smoothly from the carriage and reached into his pack. The gun was ready, and it did its work, dropping the coachman from behind while Dean raced through the exorcism with all the force he could. Bellaire screamed at him as he tossed the last container of oil toward her and shot at it, showering her with glass and oil, her chest blown in. He struck a match along the gun barrel and set her on fire with it, but he couldn't feel her or hear her now.

_Sam. I'm ready now. Just hold on._

The flaming woman leaped up from the seat but Dean flung Sam's handful of herbs at her, slammed the door and shouted the exorcism again until he saw the smoke from within her emerge distinct from the smoke of her body and clothes. The windows of the carriage cracked. The horse turned left and right, sensing danger, but the blinders kept it from seeing and Dean held its reins.

The extra oil under the seat burst into flame and the entire coach became a fireball, with a writhing demon at the center; seconds later the holy water exploded in a cloud of steam.

Dean tried to reach the horse's fittings, but the animal kept turning, panicking now, its hind legs beginning to singe.

"Steady!" he called, in between ever-louder repetitions of the exorcism. Dean cut the horse free and it fled in agony into the shallow swamp at the bottom of the levee, stumbling and collapsing in the muck. Bellaire still beat weakly against the door, her body wreathed in black smoke that swirled ever faster now.

"I’m sorry, Alice," he said, his face twisting to match the pain he saw in hers. _When do I get to save someone?_

The coach buckled as the struts bent in the heat of the fire and the glass shattered. The black smoke spun into the ground below it at last, leaving a dark patch on the river road, and a smoldering ruin of a coach, and the ashes of a young woman named Alice Bell from Sherard, Mississippi.

_Now how do I get home?_

***

Dean left Baton Rouge two days later on a large riverboat, the _Teche_ , dressed grandly in clothes he'd stolen along the way, and the fire followed him north just as the blood had followed him south. When the steamboat reached the turn at Natchez, fast currents and an overload of passengers made the captain push harder and the flames under the boiler grew too large. There was a creak and a groan, a sharp pinging of bolts, and then an eruption shook the boat. The fire rained down, hot coals setting the decks and the people on them ablaze. The lucky few escaped the initial blast and the steam that cooked those closest to the center of the ship.

Dean was never sure if it was Bellaire's vengeance or Azathunn himself back again to hobble him, but the second, larger explosion split the _Teche_ down the middle and blasted a beam against Dean's legs just as the listing ship tipped him toward the flames at its heart. Scores of people slid screaming down the deck into the fire, but Dean, not ready to enter Hell in any way but his own, held on until his half of the boat began to capsize and he saw only the dark river below him. He let go.

 


	5. …All Is Left To Gain

_October 28, 1874 – Somewhere near Colt, Arkansas_

Due west of Chickamauga, in the swamplands of southeastern Arkansas, a shadow of a man trudged along the road, his feet miring again and again in the deep mud that grabbed at his boots as if to slow him. His hair hung in greasy tatters across his face, past his nose, the rain dripping onto his chin and trickling cold inside his coat.

Evening fell quickly behind the gray clouds overhead, but even before the sun shot one final burst of orange rays against him as it neared the horizon, the darkness already clung tight around his neck in ribbons. A dog, hungry for meat and bones to crack in its jaws, retreated when the man was still fifty feet away, its eyes wide and fearful.

He'd met dogs before; he was ready. His gun was in a self-made holster, his fingers dancing over it as the dog retreated. His legs throbbed, the hairline fracture in his right leg not fully healed and his left leg burning from hip to toe with the effort of balancing him and supporting his weight. It ached from dragging him home, mile after mile, putting distance between him and the things he'd done. He could feel the knife cutting against his breastbone. One stumble and all his plans would collapse.

Sam walked beside him sometimes, and at other times fell back and was harder to hear. Sam's voice was quieter now, less distinct, but he was talking about the day they'd spent holed up in Dean's brothel in Salina, waiting for the Temperance League to mount another protest, or for Molly to scold them through the closed door – a door she wouldn't open for love or money, not even if Dean was starving, if it meant seeing him in less than appropriate dress.

"Molly always was a stickler about that," Dean agreed. "She'd bring me food and drink, and have my clothes washed and pressed without once complaining, but if I told her to come in when I was in my drawers, she'd turn pale and not speak to me for the rest of the night."

Sam chuckled at Dean's words, and then fell back a bit, his voice lost in the wind.

"You getting stuck in this mud too?" Dean asked, turning back to see if Sam needed help, and there was only the empty road.

He stopped, letting the ache in his leg subside, and ran his hand over the knife under his coat, under his vest and shirt, under the union suit that kept him half as warm as he needed to be.

"You'll be back soon enough. I know you can't stay away long," Dean said ruefully to the air around him. The rain continued. And sure enough, after another three miles, Sam was there at his side again. They continued their conversation.

***

Molly was still a day ahead, in Memphis, still married, still a nurse at the Marine Hospital. Dean assumed that anything he hadn't seen change was unchanging. It was a constant source of surprise in his life to find that things went on without him.

He gave up walking through the dark when he struck his leg against a road marker and collapsed in the mud in agony. Near the marker was a broken-off mailbox; from there, he was able to trace a muddy track from the road to the abandoned farm that stretched quietly south of the main road. A crumbling outbuilding gave him respite from the rain somewhat and the cold not at all, but he could sit with his leg raised on his pack to ease the swelling. The bone felt no worse, although it hurt deep down.

Water dripped randomly from cracks in the roof no matter where he sat, occasionally falling on his neck and finding the tracks of scarred flesh he'd borne since childhood. From there it trickled slantways along the scars until his undershirt soaked it up. Sam's fingers traced the same scars, fingers both fiery and cold as they slid across his neck. It was an intimacy only Sam was allowed – to touch that mark and feel the wrinkled flesh the fire demon had left behind.

"They feel like –"

Dean hadn't caught the word, but out there on the prairie under the stars of summer, Sam had touched his scar for the first time, three short years ago, and had said something and now it was gone.

"What did you say, Sam?"

"They feel like –" came the voice again, the warm breath on his neck, the warm fingers tracking down his neck and across his shoulder where Azathunn had tried to claim him, and Mary, for the love of her sons, had stopped a thing more powerful than Lucifer.

The memory of Sam's gentle touch and the love it inspired fell apart beneath the fears that remained in his mind – a fear of fire, and of contact, and below those fears, only anger. Sam was gone now. The barn was wet and foul and Dean was a ruin of a man, brotherless, twice-failed at rescuing Sam from Hell.

He felt the knife cut into him as he coughed, its curved blade like a hook to catch souls.

"Third time's gotta work, Sam."

***

In the night, Sam lay next to him, talking about the stars and the sky that only he could see – Sam from the prairie, when everything had been good. When they hadn't touched each other, or given in, or known they were both Mary's sons.

"Oh, you were interested. Don't act innocent, Dean, you can't be. You of all people, you haven't got an ounce of innocence left."

"You were watching me too. You watched me all the way to the creek and back. Couldn't even relieve a little tension in private."

"I liked what I saw," Sam said softly.

"Sam, why-" Dean stopped, not sure if he should ask a figment its purpose, ask his own mind why it was playing tricks on him. But Sam already knew.

"Dean, you need help. You need to find a way to live here and stop worrying about me. You think you can come rescue me from Hell like some damsel in a fairy tale, but I chose to go in."

"I don't believe you-"

"Oh but you do," Sam contested, sitting up on his knees and tapping Dean's forehead. "You do believe, in there - I made a deal for Azathunn to leave you behind and take me."

"I still have to get you out."

"And you think that knife will do the trick?"

"It's - I have a plan. Most of one, anyway."

Sam exhaled, a warm rumbling laugh in the dark.

"I find out what's waiting on the other side … I push the blade in slow and hope it doesn't hurt like I know it will. And then I die. The knife opens the door to Hell, and I walk in and find you. We get Mom and Dad out, we get ourselves out."

"Better get some rest then, Dean; that's quite a plan. You're almost home now, and Molly's going to have your hide for this, and Tez will be lurking around there somewhere, if he's not watching already. Can't let him figure out your half-assed plan, can you?"

"You're a good brother, Sam, especially when I hallucinate you."

"I'm not a good brother. I just agreed to let you kill yourself for me."

Sam kissed his head, the way John had every night until he was five and the fire demon came.

Dean fumbled suddenly through his pack and pulled out the jar, still full of Missouri dirt and Sam's ashes. He looked at it in the pitch black of the cabin, certain that he could see it, just as he saw Sam, lit so faintly it might be a trick.

***

_All Souls Day, November 2, 1874 - Memphis, Tennessee_

Dean crossed the Mississippi River into Memphis two weeks after he washed ashore in Arkansas with a cracked thighbone that he forced to work.. When he staggered off the ferry onto Front Street, his fever was spiking. His leg was so swollen with bruises and infection that he limped down the main street. He went unrecognized, so starved and thin that no one saw him for who he was in his worn-out boots and filthy clothes.

He forgot to stop his conversation with Sam even as he was negotiating the price for a room at the Peabody Hotel, his heavy black coat shedding rainwater over the mud he'd tracked across the lobby. The desk clerk sent word to the Marine Hospital, fearing some new symptom of the Fever, for the man in front of him radiated heat.

Molly was midway through bathing a woman who had wasted away from cholera and was only now turning the corner. It was the odd look on the woman's face that unnerved Molly the most, and she gathered herself before she rose and turned to see who or what had appeared behind her.

The doctor who'd brought her to Dean the first time, the one with the odd birthmark on his face said "You're needed again," and she knew Dean was back.

***

When Tez arrived at the hotel with Molly, Dean's mood worsened. Molly looked at Tez as if he should do something, but he was merely watching Dean limp from the window to the desk.

"Mr. Winchester, I do not appreciate your vanishing for weeks and months without a word," she said, her frustration showing.

"Molly, you cannot come take care of me, and neither can he."

"Who is this man, Mr. W? Do you know him? He regularly impersonates a doctor."

"He can explain that better himself."

Tez made no attempt at explanation, continuing to study Dean.

"Mr. W, lay down and let me at least tend to whatever has lamed your leg."

Molly made to remove his coat but he grabbed it tight and closed it over the knife that hung around his neck. Dean made a gesture as if he were telling someone to wait while he dealt with this new problem.

"Yes, it's your coat," he said to a person at the foot of the bed, so convincingly that Molly had to look.

Molly recognized the hallucinatory drift in Dean's eyes, seeing things only he could see. It was the look in so many of her yellow fever patients, the ones mercifully oblivious to their impending death. But Dean Winchester had never hallucinated, not in all the many years she'd known him.

"Samuel's not here, Mr. W.," she said, humoring him.

"I know, Molly, I know, I- Just let me rest. And take that sorry excuse for a demi-god with you. I've _given up_ , are you happy?" he asked, glaring at Tez. His eyes flicked once to the foot of the bed, and then to Molly. "Wait, Molly, I want to ask – what do you think Hell is like?"

"You, Doctor, or whoever you may be, you come explain yourself and we'll let him rest. There's no dealing with him when he's like this. Take this medicine, Mr. W. While I'm watching."

She left a second small bottle by the bedside, took Tez by the arm and marched him from the room, promising to return in a few minutes.

"See that? That's why I love her," he said to the foot of the bed, as she pulled the door closed. "Sam? Where'd you go now? Shit." He lay back on the pillows, alone for a while. "How do I die, Sam?

***

Molly convinced the hotel manager to let Dean stay, as he was not carrying any communicable disease. She was going to insist on returning to see him with a proper doctor, but when she turned around, her escort had vanished.

"Doctors care. They don't watch suspiciously." It occurred to her that he might be another thing Dean had awoken. "Demi-god, he called you. We'll see about that."

She climbed the stairs to Dean's room rather than wait for the elevator, and knocked. There was no reply. She was about to turn the handle when she heard his familiar deep voice from down the hall. She approached the shared baths and heard him cough deeply and then continue talking, one half of a conversation she could barely make out.

_Mr. W, - a game leg and imaginary companions. In worse trouble than when you first came to us in Salina. Where have you been all this time?_

She returned to his room to wait, settling in the chair by the window. Dean's journal lay on the side table, open. He'd written "On my way," and when she'd overcome her instincts and flipped back a page or two, the previous entry was dated only the day after he'd left Memphis. On the one intervening page that spanned nearly a month, he'd scribbled notes about death, the river Styx, a crudely drawn scythe, and a few other words she couldn't make out.

"Molly!"

"Mr. W.," she gasped, turning in embarrassment. Dean had removed his soaking wet coat and his shirt as well. The knife hung against his chest, which was covered with tiny inflamed cuts. He was thinner even than she'd realized and it worried her.

"You let me tend to your leg, Mr. W., see what's to be done here. Then you come to the Hospital and we make you well."

She went to him and made to lift the knife away to examine his wounds, but he stepped back; when she put her hand out again, he turned away in fear and grabbed her wrist, shoving hard enough to make her stumble. He held the knife tight against his chest with his other hand, making a new cut that bled slowly as he tried to apologize.

"Molly," he said, gentler now, his voice weak and lost, even in the silence that filled the room.

Molly tried yet again: "You need-"

"No, Molly, you leave me be, I'll be fine. It's not like I'm going to die tonight. The leg is bruised, not broken in two. The boot sores will heal, the cuts will heal, the -"

Her gaze shut him up. "You're not yourself."

"I am, Molly. I'm exactly what I've always been."

"Not in all the time I've known you have you been less like yourself."

"Leave me be, Molly. You and Simon have been kind to me, but you have a life to lead."

"I'll be back tomorrow with a real doctor. You need to rest. That will clear your head. And I'll get food sent up. You always eat. Since when do you not eat?" She hustled him into bed amid a flurry of similar pronouncements and questions, then reached again for the knife. He blocked hard, hurting her.

"Sorry, Molly. Stay clear of it. It's very sharp."

"I'll be back first thing in the morning." Her expression was like a weight on him, holding him motionless on the bed. She watched him until the last moment as she closed the door.

When she was gone, he let go of the knife, took it off carefully and wrapped it with the red cloth. The blade cut through at the slightest pressure, and he ended up wrapping it twice. He took off his pants and looked at the purplish swelling above and around his knee, the yellow streaks trailing down his swollen lower leg. It ached now more than on the road, and Sam didn't reappear that night.

_No one to complain to._

***

_November 3, 1874 – Memphis, Tennessee_

Dean awoke the next day at 5:19, wet from the sweat of fever breaking in the night, starving for a good meal, and no longer in great pain. He grabbed immediately for the knife under his pillow and slit a fresh cut in his hand for his clumsiness.

He wrote out a list that had been forming in his head all night as he tossed, unable to get comfortable. He set himself a deadline to learn all he could about death, starting with those who knew best: the spiritualist on Winchester Street, the priests of the Christian Brothers college, and Malachi, his riskiest encounter.

At six, the staff was up and about, and food was to be had. The facilities at the Peabody were meager, but he was able to get a large breakfast sent up, seized from the servant at the door, who took in his naked state, the mud on the carpeting, and the fearsome-looking knife around his neck, all at once. She backed away quickly, spilling the coffee. "Watch it!" Dean muttered as he caught the tray in midair and slammed the door with a belated "Thank you."

He cleaned himself up, but it only emphasized his narrow face and hungry look. He left by 6:30 to avoid Molly, taking a hired carriage. The first stop was to see a woman he'd met a year earlier. Her name was Cora Sprague, a beautiful twenty-year-old who knew more about the spirit world than any of the con artists who dealt in table rapping and ghostly voices.

"You know it's all real," Dean blurted out in the middle of her standard introduction to the Mystical World.

"I do, Mr. Winchester," she said, suddenly businesslike. "And for that reason, I hesitate to read for you. I will not look past the veil for those you've lost."

"I don't want a séance, Cora. Where do I find myself when I'm on the other side?"

"You don't know? Do you not send evil things there all the time, you hunters?"

"Tell me what I'll find."

"When you die some day?" she added, hoping that was his intended meaning but seeing the look of deep, impatient curiosity in his eyes.

Dean asked her of death and the world of the dead - so many questions and so persistently detailed that she grew uneasy discussing the topic.

"What awaits you depends on what kind of person you were," she said finally. "Many have reported seeing relatives and friends waiting to guide them on, but those are Death's reapers."

"Reapers?" Dean asked. He wrote the word in his notebook.

"They are the only ones who can part the veil. But let us pass on from this to a topic with more hope."

"I need to know. What is Hell like?"

"When people ask me about death, they fear for their soul. But with you, Mr. Winchester, I fear for my own. I must ask you to go now. You have a burden that no one should carry."

When she closed the door behind him and looked around at the occult trappings that lined the walls of her room, she shivered.

"Boy wants to die. Go die somewhere else, far from me, and take that curse with you."

***

Dean's next stop was the college of the Christian Brothers, where he spoke with one of the instructors, Brother Alexandre, an expert both in the rites and rituals of death, and in shepherding doubters toward God. It didn't go well for either of them.

"What I really came here to ask was what happens after we die," Dean said, not long into the conversation as they walked the grounds under overcast skies.

"That is a very common question, Mr.-?"

"Samuels."

"It is a concern we all share, Mr. Samuels. Many of us will go to Heaven, to return to God's embrace," Brother Alexandre said with practiced tone.

"No, I meant what happens right after we die? Is anyone there? Do we get to explain ourselves?"

"I'm not sure anyone knows for sure-"

"Do you know about reapers?"

"I- do not. But folk tales of a Grim Reaper are just that. I can't recall the Bible saying anything about them." He was smiling now, but Dean was not.

"Hmmm. They were in one of Malachi's books, but not in another that seemed fairly authoritative. Supposed to meet you, help you make the crossing."

"Ah, you mean angels-"

Dean laughed so disrespectfully and made such a vulgar sound that Brother Alexandre decided then and there to try the more direct methods Brother LeMoyne discouraged.

"Are you Catholic, son?"

"No, but I have a friend who I would have to assume is more along those lines. And honestly, I have to say it's making more and more sense every day. But then almost all the major religions are. I have to get going though," Dean said, ignoring Alexandre to check his pocket watch. "Tight schedule today. So nothing about reapers, Death, that sort of thing?" He held his arms out as if waiting for Alexandre to drop the answer in his hands.

"Let me get Brother LeMoyne," was the only thing Alexandre said.

***

"Welcome, brother," said the head of the college, a severe-looking man with silver hair and a large crucifix.

"I'm not your brother," Dean answered, his impatience not moderated.

"Brother _in God's love_ is how it was meant-"

"And I'm _definitely_ not your brother in God's love," Dean said, more resigned this time. LeMoyne completely mistook this mood as a search for God's forgiveness, and began to tell Dean a story from the Old Testament. Dean interrupted between "Am I" and "my brother's keeper".

"I can see where this is going, so let me just ask you if you happen to know - What exactly did Abel do to deserve getting killed?"

Brother Alexandre was speechless, and just when Brother LeMoyne composed a plausible reply, Dean stepped on that as well.

"Because I don't think Abel would just give up without a fight, not to his brother. Unless Abel knew that dying would make things right… solve a problem…" Dean went on for a long while, giving nothing less than a wholesale and very dark revision of the Book of Genesis, oblivious to the lack of response from the stunned clerics.

When Dean finally left, Alexandre felt far older than when he'd arrived.

"His passion about Death was… terrifying. Did we pull him back toward the light?" asked the younger priest, his hand over the cross that hung against his chest.

"Do not speak of him. To anyone," said Brother LeMoyne, sweat beading across his forehead. "Send a message to Kearney at the St. Louis Cathedral. Tell him about this Remy Samuels. Beg him to come here as soon as he can. There is something dark approaching and he will know what it is and how to defeat it."

Brother LeMoyne knelt and prayed for strength that night, sending prayers of thanks to the Archangels that help was finally coming.

***

Dean returned later that same afternoon to the Peabody with his leg aching and his arms loaded full of books taken from Malachi's house. Malachi had not reappeared in Memphis yet.

"Maybe Heaven wanted to have a word with him about how he got his wings back," Dean muttered to himself in the elevator, eliciting sidelong glances and nervous coughs from the operator and the couple riding with him. When the elevator jerked to a stop, a book slid out from under his arm and splayed open on the floor, its angelic writing and mysterious sigils confirming his insanity to everyone.

"Sorry about that," he said, smiling at the couple as he tried to kneel and pick up the book; his leg protested the awkward squat, but no one moved a finger to help him. "Thanks for nothing," he said when he'd regained his footing and his balance.

They watched him head off down the long corridor, and when he turned to look back, the operator slammed the door shut and peered out the small glass window.

"They act like they saw _you_ , Sam."

"I think that was all you, Dean. You're still looking pretty scruffy, shower or not."

"I washed."

"It's more the crazy hair and the sunken eyes. You look like Hell."

"Oh I suppose you think that's funny."

Sam only laughed and put his hand on Dean's shoulder. Dean entered the room and was alone, again.

"Damn you coming and going! You're worse than Tez and Malachi both."

***

Malachi's books were odd, no doubt about that, but no odder than the one he'd lifted from the rare books collection at the College before his disastrous interview. Dean came eventually to the book he'd seen before, before Sam died, before Malachi was against them, if he'd ever been for them. It had a false cover, and beneath that was an ancient book in an ancient script. Inside, the words were hard to read, both because they were written in a shaky hand and in a dialect that tested Dean's years of Latin education thoroughly. After several hours he had a headache and a page of scribbles that spoke vaguely of heresy and the "true nature of God."

Dean made it to the fourth page before he tired of allusions to "the Recurrence". He tossed that book aside and picked up one after the other. Some were in scripts he couldn't read, but others were rare old books from England and France, and one from the Mexican empire, an old native text preserved from destruction. It was unreadable hieroglyphs. None talked about Death or what lay beyond, as far as he could tell.

He threw the volume against the wall and pressed his lips together to choke back sob that was forming. He strode to the window and threw it open. A mosquito flew in, the last of the late season, now chilled and unable to escape his hand as he caught and crushed it.

He looked at the blood on his hand; it had fed on someone and now that blood was a small streak across his palm. He returned to the book he'd tossed and picked it up; a small inner document had been dislodged from a pocket inside the back cover, and it gave him, in Spanish translation, an old myth of hero brothers who had many tricks to cheat death. Dean read, leaning against the bed, for a solid quarter hour. Sam watched him from the chair by the window, until Dean, annoyed, threw a pillow at him.

"Sam, I'll find a way. I'll turn death against itself. I'll get it right, I'll get in, and I'll get you out. No, it isn't stupid. Nothing left to lose."

________________________________________

 

I _'m Samuel. My father is John_ he began over again. His mind raced back and forth, trying to find and mend all the gaps torn in it. Between comforting, familiar scenes of John in Tennessee and Dean in Salina he couldn't remember what exactly had been taken, only that he was losing his soul, piece by piece. There were no more smells of the world he'd been born into. Memory of smells and tastes went first, eagerly taken by the demons.

_I have a brother. I always did and never knew. Our father thought he was dead, and hid him from me, hid mom from me. I can't hate a man who's lying on a rack being cut apart. He still trusts the angels to set him free and take him to Heaven. They haven't cut that out of him, but they try._

_I have a brother_ he started again, sensing that he'd wandered from his daily recitation.

_My brother's name is Dean, and I fell in love with him one summer, it was 18-. 1870? It was the summer we met and he was a natural at hunting. Handsome, arrogant, a pain in the ass. He loved me back and then Azathunn showed us our family's truth and Dean never loved me as much after that._

Sam stopped, wondering if that was right. Azazel said so many things when they tore the memories from him, little strips of his soul peeled away to be consumed, and new ones that he clung to, distrusting them all, now.

***

_November 5, 1874_

A late knock on the door brought Molly an odd guest – the doctor she'd seen twice now. She invited him to sit, and he threw her off balance merely by opening his mouth.

"I'm not a demi-god," Tez began.

"No, of course not."

"But that is fairly close to the truth. You've met Malachi, he tells me."

She maintained the composure that had helped her run a house of prostitution with Dean in charge.

"I have met a demon and an angel. Which are you?" she asked.

"I see why Dean likes you," Tez smiled. "Can you tell me where you got the amulet Dean wears? This one?"

He produced it from his vest pocket, the odd golden face swinging in the air.

"My grandfather." She seemed unable to say much more, but Tez was patient. "In Guatemala, in the jungle he found it."

"It's one of a kind. It's how your ancestors depicted my brother, the one who burned down your brothel in Salina. I take it he was the demon you referred to."

"Are you a demon or an angel?" Molly asked again, her eyes on the amulet.

"I'm trying to help Dean not end up in Hell. He has a promise to keep and Sam's already broken his part of it."

***

Tez came to Dean at the hotel shortly after he left Molly. Dean was asleep, face sunk into the pillows. Tez cleared his throat, and when that had no effect on the snoring, he picked up Malachi's book, read a bit, and slammed it shut.

"Jeez!" Dean shouted angrily, awaking with a start and then sliding one hand carefully onto the handle of the knife under the pillow.

"Your Molly is a unique woman. But your little side trip is only delaying the work Malachi will train you for. Stop indulging your self-pity and face your battle."

"Can we talk at Malachi's tomorrow? Over dinner?" Dean asked, not a lie in any way.

"Tomorrow morning. I know you rise early."

"And give me back the amulet. She gave it to me as a gift."

Tez left the amulet in Dean's hand, and was gone.

***

_November 6, 1874_

All morning, Dean tried to improve himself. He worked on his hair first, attempting to cut it into some shorter version of how he remembered it being in Salina. It came out oddly short on the sides and back where he had less control, almost a military trim. On top, it lay flat when wet and stood up when dry, giving him a ridiculous look. He kept the sideburns Sam had always liked, now out of proportion.

 _This is a colossal failure,_ he thought. "Sam, you can tell me how you like this," he said, hoping that Sam would return to him there in the room. He was gone now, without a word or a sign. _Is it better that I don't see my dead brother, or worse?_

He pulled on a clean shirt and Simon's blue vest, borrowed and never used. It seemed only right now to look the way he had looked when Sam vanished, or close to it. _Don't want to make it too hard to recognize me._  
  
He left the top buttons of the shirt and vest open so his chest was exposed. The bed was ready, the door locked. He stared at himself in the mirror longer than usual.

***

Dean pressed the knife against his chest, and the tip cut in. He repeated the steps over and over in his head.

 _Kill myself. Always a good start to any plan. Wait for the reaper, and kill it. Wait for the veil to open. Walk into the underworld without a guide. Rescue everyone. Kill a yellow-eyed demon a as a favor to a red-eyed demon._  
  
He laughed quietly, tears running down his face.

 _And Sam? When I come for you, you'd better not be a yellow-eyed demon. And then we get out somehow, the two of us. Restore the Recurrence, whatever it is, and get Tez off our backs._  
  
He doubted his own plan, doubted the knife would do anything but kill him. And that, in itself, would be a relief. Hellfire would be relief. In charge of his own life and death. But there was hope in his hands too, hope from an ancient book he'd stolen from a church, hope from a red-eyed demon who hated him more than any human on earth. Hope that he'd hold his brother again, and say just one thing to him.

***

Molly woke early while Simon still slumbered. She pulled on her housecoat against the chill in the room. The gray weather had followed Dean home and never left. She looked at the clock in the hall and saw how early it was.

"I never get up this early. What's wrong with me?"

"Molly?" Simon called from the bedroom behind her. "What are you doing?"

"Go back to sleep. Things on my mind is all. You rest. Big day for you today with your new store opening."

Simon grunted and was quiet; a soft snore followed quickly.

Molly made her way downstairs in the dark house to the long parlor table where she'd never managed to get Dean and Simon together for more than a handful of meals in three months. The doctor or demigod or whatever he was had sat at the end and the chair was still pulled out. She pushed it back in, and worry gripped her. She watched the city out the window, tiny points of light from gaslamps on the main road, from the city center some buildings lit with tiny lights like sparks from a fire. She shivered as the memory of the fire demon's final attack on Sam and Dean resurfaced.

_What did I meet yesterday? Demons, and angels, and now something that is brother to a demon but wants Dean alive. Mr. W., what is this thing you carry with you?_

She shook off her night thoughts and went to make a sleep tea, but stopped when the clock struck 5:30.

_Up so early when I never am. Up at your hours, Mr. W._

The knife around his neck flashed in her mind, a curving blade that had cut a score of tiny wounds over his heart. His different mood, his visions, his talk of death all fell into place. She turned and raced up the stairs two at a time, calling for Simon.

 


	6. The Roofless Building

_November 6, 1874 – Memphis, Tennessee_

Molly and Simon raced up the stairs at the Peabody, Molly calling out Dean's name, Simon furious at this early-morning madness and at his limit of tolerance for Mr. Winchester.

Dean looked at the locked door for the tenth time since he'd laid down. _Still locked. Molly, please, God, go away, Molly. You can't be here. Let the hotel clerk have no keys. Let him come in first. Let him see me, cover me, hide this from your eyes. Let him take the knife away before you see._

"I'm sorry, Molly," Dean whispered. They were on the last flight of stairs when they heard Dean cry out once: "SAM!

Molly stumbled, gasping.

***

The knife slid in at Sam's name, curving up between the ribs into Dean's heart, the wound so impossibly small and painless as the blade turned.

Molly knew from that one word why he'd done it, but she couldn't move. Simon ran down the hall with the security guard in tow and the manager running to catch up. Simon was ready to bust down the door, but when the guard realized this, he jumped between Simon and the door.

"He's going to kill himself, man!" Simon yelled. Molly had caught up, with the manager's help. The security guard turned to her, giving Simon the distraction he needed to kick the door in. He froze, took in the scene, he stepped back into the hall to keep Molly from entering.

But Molly saw it clearly through the crack of the door hinge, and was she adrift in the hall, her head turned sideways, seeing a thin slice of Dean's death, a blue vest, a knife, and Dean's chest around it.

***

Dean was already gone by the time the door burst open. Simon was shocked by the subtle horror of the peaceful tableau and he determined to spare Molly the sight of suicide. He wrapped his hand around the hilt that Dean was still gripping tight, tried to pull it and the hook caught on Dean's ribs, tearing his heart wide open and sending a wash of blood out of the wound.

Simon realized too late that he was making it all worse. And in that moment, the knife took its second victim, its curse washing through Simon as Dean's blood touched his hands. He fell sideways across Dean, lifeless. All of this Molly saw from where she'd leaned against the doorframe. The manager was babbling something she couldn't make out.

Dean lay rigid and pale now, eyes looking farther than Molly had ever seen. Her husband lay dead with him, his hands soaked in Dean's blood. Nothing moved.

Molly was with Simon in an instant, lifting his head up as his empty eyes lolled. _No pulse_ – "Simon – What have you done?"

Dean lay unmoving, his fingers still tight around the knife, the handle pointing at Simon. She went back and forth from Dean to Simon, regretting her words to Dean after Sam's funeral, and to her husband when he'd intervened. She waited for it to be over, for Dean to rise up, pull the knife from himself, a parlor trick. Simon was in on it all, of course.

Yet Dean was silent, and Simon lay awkwardly across his legs. It was not quiet anywhere else. There was a whirl of blood and anger and fear, and then breath coming too fast, and voices from the door and the hall beyond, terrified whispering and screams.

Molly shrank down on the floor, her husband gone, and her truest friend now joining his brother in death. She screamed and prayed and no more screams came although her mouth was wide; she was alone in the Guatemalan jungle, choking on the rope tied around her neck, her family dead around her as she was taken north to service the whorehouses of the capital.

***

Dean was lying on the bed, the knife deep into his chest when the pain stopped. He watched in shock as Simon burst in, grabbing the knife in his chest and dying a moment later, falling hard across the bed and across his legs. Dean jumped up and watched the full horror spread to include Molly, for whom no note, no apology would ever be enough.

Unable to touch her, he didn't know what to do next. Molly was led out, her commanding presence gone, her voice silenced. It cut into him just like the knife had. Others were in the room then, crying out, yelling useless orders.

"What is this?" Simon asked, sitting up on the bed. "I thought you were dead," he said, looking at Dean as if he'd made a mistake, just a flash of relief.

Dean had no answer for him, but the scene was clear. He gestured helplessly, and Simon looked between his corpse on the bed beside him and the open door through which several guests and employees were gawking. None of the people attending to the bodies seemed to notice him.

"I'm not. I can't be," Simon reassured himself. "Where is Molly?"

"They took her out already," Dean said numbly gesturing at the door. "I'm sorry, Simon," Dean said weakly. "I didn't think you'd be the one to touch it."

"And what if _Molly_ had come in first, to save her precious Mr. W?" Simon said. "I have to go find her."

 _Nothing I do…. It just gets worse,_ Dean thought as he watched Simon head right through the crowd into the hallway.

"YOU," Simon roared over his shoulder when he couldn't find Molly, "you be here when I get back," and he was gone off down the hall, a flickering ghost.

One of the many men in the room was not running around. He was looking at Dean. Right at him.

"You're the reaper?" Dean asked with his usual bluntness.

He was average in many ways, not at all like an undertaker or a ghoul, but he was not calm either. There was no comfort in his voice, no gentle allure that banished fear and smoothed the way to the afterlife. This man was afraid.

"What have you done?" the man demanded, confused and angry.

"More than I thought I could," Dean replied, watching the man warily.

"How is that still here?" the man asked, pointing at Dean's chest, where the knife had stayed, even in death.

Only now, Dean realized, he'd have to pull it out if he was going to kill the reaper with it.

The reaper stared at the knife in horror. He had no idea what it was, but it was not possible for it to still be in Dean's soul.

Dean drew the blade out, slowly, painfully as the hooked end caught on his ribs. It slid from his chest coated with blood. The amulet slipped down into place, smearing the blood as it passed.

"I don't know what you think you're doing, Dean," the reaper said, watching the knife in Dean's hand with alarm. "That killed both of you and brought itself through to this world. The curse on the blade is very old and very strong."

"Don't I know it," Dean said, putting his guilt aside to deal with this last obstacle. "Three for two, the old woman said, that crazy cannibal." He felt a new energy in him now. He was back in charge. He was _doing_ something.

"Three for two?" the reaper asked, watching the knife approach.

"Turn death against itself and the world will rend," Dean said, repeating the text he'd found in the translated manuscript. "Sorry about this, I really am. It might hurt."

The reaper looked up into Dean's eyes in confusion as Dean thrust the knife up through its chest.

"But you're dead already, aren't you," Dean noted. The sounds of the room fell away, and then the walls. The reaper in his arms was pulled away as well, eyes and mouth wide in shock. He disintegrated in a blinding flash of light that tore Dean from the world.

_This had better work._

Dean fell up, and up, until he lost consciousness.

***

Molly knew, when she awoke in the hospital, that the doctor standing over her was not supposed to be there; she'd spoken to him a couple of times before, once on hot summer day as she rested from tending the victims of cholera and yellow fever, once at her house on Adams Ave, and most recently at Dean's room at the Peabody. He was tall, eyes and skin brown like hers, with an odd reddish birthmark across his face. He had opened the doors the day they first met and brought her to Dean, who'd been missing for months. Now the strange doctor was here again, _and he isn't supposed to be. I recognize him._  
  
"You've recovered?" he asked her.

"Did he die because of you?" Molly asked, the memory returning vividly.

"No," he said with some sympathy. "We are capable of many things, Dean and I, where our brothers are involved. But I did not do this to him. He did it by his own hand."

"What are you? I've asked you twice now and you don't answer."

"We are legion, my brother and I," he said gently, taking her hand and lifting her up to sit on the edge of the hospital bed. "The angels look up to what we once were, to all the souls we've gathered to us, as if we were God. But that isn't for you to worry on, or even know."

Molly was pulled along by his eyes, but his words told her little. She tried not to look at him, and his words began to make some sense.

"You'll be needed again, Molly. Bury your husband, and- "

"I have no need for your advice, whatever you are. I live my life by my terms. I will bury my husband as is our custom and I will mourn him." Her voice had become tight and angry.

"You must not bury Dean."

"No, of course not."

Tez hid his surprise. "Dean chose his friends well."

"I chose him as a friend. And I know him. If he's killed himself, it's to be with Samuel, and even Hell can't hold both of them down if they work together."

"He won't bring his brother back, not this way."

"Dean will be back here, sooner than later."

"Molly Tohil, take his body home and wait. If he comes back without Sam, he'll only keep trying. And if he comes back _with_ Sam, I'll kill them both on the spot."

She stared him down, and counted it as a victory when he vanished. His words rang in her head – _"I'll kill them both on the spot._ " He was powerful, seemingly almighty; there was no good way to deal with gods but to be human, she rationalized, because they would understand that least of all.

"You will not kill Dean or Samuel Winchester, any more than your brother could when he tried. I will become your enemy, for now," she said to the empty room. _But Dean is gone now, again, and my love, my Simon, you've left me._

She cried for Simon, alone in the narrow bed, and for Dean too. In the quietness of the room, the screaming of patients not yet given their laudanum was audible.

_I know your screaming. I just can't join you. I have things to do._

________________________________________

Every part of Dean hurt, from his toes, which felt solid ground under them, to his teeth, which ached.

_I still feel pain? I still have teeth? God I hope I have all my teeth._

He opened his eyes, ready for anything, ready for a real Hell, not the lies that Tez fed him, the theft of real hope to stop him from doing what he'd just done. The land, if it was land, was empty, a vast stone plain stretching to a horizon he couldn't make out. He looked up and nearly vomited, so intense was the vertigo. He crouched on the ground to fight the sensation of falling _up_.

_No wonder demons are grumpy._

He opened one eye again and turned his head slightly to look up. High above him the sky was a swirling, sickening cloud, and from it he could hear a screeching sound that made him shudder.

He looked down at his chest and saw the wound leaking blood. The amulet was still with him, but his pockets were empty. From overhead he heard new sounds and winced as he looked carefully upward again. Black things were flying up there, circling and streaming like wisps of darkest smoke against the putrid greenish cloud.

_Demons. Shit._

Dean turned to look for shelter, but the land was devoid of life, not even a shrub or a creek. No buildings were within sight. Just the things overhead, coming slowly closer.

_No Tez. No Sam._

He set out in a direction that seemed right, only to find the land sloping down. It was hardly a valley, more of a dip; it rose again soon enough and climbing was easy, far easier than the way down. He reached the top and saw the land rolling on in similar hillocks, rippling out from a distant point. The black things overhead were more numerous now, and closer. Dean ran.

On the third hill, he stumbled, falling to his hand and knees. Three or four of the wisps – demons, he'd decided – came swirling toward him like black clouds filled with lightning and sparks, the way they'd appeared when they destroyed the party at Zion Grove, just as he'd been welcomed into Sam's adopted family.

Dean remembered the prayer, and said it softly as he stood up again. His chest hurt now, and the prayer had no effect, so he turned toward the top of the low hill. Looking down from the crest, he saw a building. Above him, the black ribbons of flame and smoke closed in. He sprinted for the building with every last bit of life in him.

When he opened the large door, he saw the symbols covering both it and the walls, layers upon layers deep in sigils and marks, the writing of every power there was, but he couldn't stop to read them. He pulled the door closed behind him, and then he looked up.

_Who makes a shelter without a roof? How am I supposed I hide in here?_

Dean felt for the knife but it was not in his chest, or his hand, or his pockets, and then he remembered – _It's in the reaper's chest. Damn._

The demons swirled around the building but did not enter, and some even turned back for the sky. There was no roof, but the black smoke never came inside; it seemed to have lost him, or lost interest.

Dean knew he was in a holy building, empty but for two altar-tables at the front, one on each side of the center path, each bearing three objects. There were no crosses or other signs of a god or gods, but he could feel the sacredness of the place. The objects on the altars at the front were books; _couldn't hurt to look_ , he thought, remembering every story he'd been told as a kid that ended badly when people said that. Still, he stayed clear of the table on the left. It felt wrong to approach it.

One book on the altar was no book at all but a clay tablet covered with miniscule swirls and dots. It wasn't angelic handwriting, but something even older. His head ached as it tried to make sense of the text, but he felt it becoming clear even as he looked at it; he closed his eyes briefly to silence the voice he could hear speaking from the tablet. It was familiar, imperious, and … so familiar. He'd heard that story before.

_Is it my own voice?_

Next to it were two other books, one on leather or something like it – animal skin perhaps, dark at the edges and nearly translucent in the center, making the words from two pages run together. This too pressed on his mind and he could hear a high, ringing voice that pierced into his mind and spoke of a proud war to bring good and vanquish evil to the cage where it belonged. He shifted his gaze toward the third book, but it was worse there – a headache struck, like circus elephants trampling him. He staggered back from the table and kept moving until his head stopped hurting, near the door.

He peered outside and saw it was still lifeless and silent – forgotten or just waiting, there was no way to tell what this land was, but the demons had left it. Over it all, the distant scrape of nails on a chalkboard ate at his ears, the sound from the sky above.

_Is this Hell? I wonder if I came to the wrong place. This was a bad idea._

Above him, the black smoke vanished into the gangrenous sky. The clouds seemed close, within reach even. He wanted to find out where he was, and if demons live up there, he reasoned it was Hell.

The land below him fell away and he soon discovered the source of the sound as he stood among it: miles and miles of tortured souls, some human, some half fire and smoke, the demons to be. All of them hung on chains, the hooks ripping their flesh apart as they writhed and screamed.

***

"Sammy, get up. Time to die a little more. Death is the road to God."

Azazel, still in the appearance of a preacher, all in dour black, looked crushed down by a weight of responsibility that he alone carried on his shoulders.

"Won't be long now till we get the last memories out of you and you burn all the way through." His eyes were fiery yellow nearly all the time now.

He never tired of telling the demons in his circle about his many sacrifices, his faith, and how the Lord Azathunn had spoken to him alone and given _him_ the blessing of the fire in his eyes, which he shared with his most loyal supporters.

"Why don't you just possess me, make me do what you want?" Sam demanded.

"If only our plans were so uncomplicated. You're special, Sam, you see? Special to our plans, to our Lord."

"Azathunn."

"There is no other Lord."

"There's God-"

Azazel struck him and grabbed his arm to keep him from falling, twisting it painfully at the shoulder.

"God left us. He doesn't speak to demons _or_ to angels. Not since Lucifer soared beyond where his wings could carry him." His voice had taken on the tone of one remembering nostalgically a past others had long forgotten. "I helped him, you know; I was loyal," he added.

"I can see why God doesn't talk to you. You're insane."

"He knows nothing of us!" Azazel shouted, his anger returning. "Even Azathunn can't hear him now."

"So your Lord isn't perfect?" Sam said.

"He will make you perfect soon, Sammy," he said, ignoring the blasphemy. "Enjoy the pain you feel; enjoy the fire that fills the holes we cut into you."

***

In between these painful times where his soul was dissected and extracted, Sam's days were somehow worse. Months and years stretched into decades beneath a violent greenish-black sky. The unremitting screams of souls being twisted into demons had become a dull note in the back of his head, as Azazel had promised they would. His own screams were never dull, never fading. Hell was hallucination upon hallucination that preyed upon his sense of normalcy until it was in shreds. Eventually only two voices began to dominate – the Preacher and the Fire.

 _My father was here, in Hell with me. I saw him. Dean was supposed to come in and rescue him, but Azathunn took me instead. Dean, I wouldn't have… You're my brother-_ He stopped, feeling the pain intensify as he tried to remember Dean.

***

In the end, Hell was not what Dean had expected. He seemed to be unnoticed for the moment, and tried to keep himself far from anything that looked like a demon, but the landscape, the rules of this new world – up and down, even – were obscure. Every time he wanted to move away from some new horror, he lost sight of it and appeared in a new place. He was dizzy and nauseous, and the screams and shrieks were far worse when he knew that souls made them, and when he saw why.

He shut his eyes and found himself in a different corner of Hell, his head spinning. He covered his eyes and it got worse. When he opened them again, Bellaire was in front of him. She lunged at him, raining blows on him until he could hardly move. An apology seemed inadequate, so he settled for charm.

"Your black eye is gone. You're not half bad looking."

She struck him across the jaw and nearly dislocated it.

"You wanted me to kill someone?" he asked when he could speak again. He reached for the knife and realized again that it was gone. Not in his chest, his hand, not anywhere.

"With WHAT?" she screamed. "How did you lose the knife?"

"I killed a good friend with that thing."

"Who cares?" she screamed again. "Now _I'm_ in Hell again, and have no weapon to kill Azazel."

"I'm here too."

"I don't care, Dean-"

She was about to strike him again, or scream with rage, or both, when suddenly he saw a flash of the old red-eyed demon in her, solicitous and oily, and she composed herself to do what she did best.

"Dean, your brother's here, why not go find him? It's not far, and if you close your eyes and wish very hard, you just might end up closer to where you want to be." The last part was distinctly sarcastic. "Look in the Tower. And don't forget – Azazel is the demon you want to kill." This time, her face was serious. "And let me give you a kiss, for good luck."

"No-!" was all he got out before her lips were on his.

Dean shook his head – he'd closed his eyes in horror and now was somewhere else entirely, and Bellaire was gone. He looked around for a tower, and saw only the skewed angles of the world he was now in. Nothing was straightforward, nothing was a clear path. He closed his eyes to block out the sickening motion and concentrated on a "tower". He hit the ground and when he rolled over, he lay with his mouth open in shock. The tower rose in a grotesque spiral, ever narrower and darker toward where the top vanished what looked like miles over his head, slipping into the swirl of cloud and lightning. It was taller and darker than he could remember anything being, monstrous and cold, and the tiny bits of fire that burned within its walls were cold stars. It was the card he'd seen in their tarot reading.

_And it has gates. Are you in there, Sammy?_

He bit his lip and stood up. The few figures he could see moving in and out of the tower did not seem to notice him, but he slunk across the open ground and along the lower walls toward the staircase that led into the tower.

***

_I'm Sam. I had a brother, once, but he left me so he could follow his own road. He's gone now, and I have things to do. Big things._

Sam's soul was a ragged network of ideas and actions, knowledge gained and memories that held on stubbornly, like the green-eyed man he met in a place called the Impala. Azathunn pushed the demons to search harder and Azazel did his best, but what they sought was not there.

"How can his soul not remember the promise they made to God?" Azazel dared to wonder aloud – and for that he was tormented worse than any other, by Azathunn himself, who wondered the same thing.

***

Dean was well aware that he was passing unhindered, not only through the large portal at the base of the tower, but as he climbed floor after floor. He wasn't invisible, but there didn't seem to be anyone guarding the tower.

Nearly an hour after he started his search, he looked out a window and saw great mountains and valleys, ever changing, and in the distance in every direction, the same sickly cloud of chains and writhing souls. He was farther up than he'd ever been, and his Kansas roots were making him nervous about ever making it all the way down again. He turned from the window and was face to face with a woman, her eyes all black.

Dean froze, but she was looking right at him. He smiled, and her face took on an odd expression.

"You're going the wrong way," the demon said.

"I have no idea where I'm going," he said testily.

"In that case, you might want to talk to the man in here. Maybe he has some ideas." The demon pushed the door behind her open with a smile that made Dean shudder, and Dean had no choice but to walk in.

On the table was a body – a flayed cadaver, organs set aside and limbs askew. Blood dripped onto the stone floor – like the walls, the same dark glassy stone with flecks of light in it.

Dean approached, sure he was too late to save Sam, and not sure he wanted to see what was being done to his body. When he saw who it was on the table, he thought pity might be the right emotion, but he had none.

***

"Your father, you see, lost his love for you, and chose instead to follow the Angels and the promises of God that they counterfeit daily," Azazel whispered to Sam as they stood at the window, high up in the tower. "He trusted their words more than he loved you."

"No, that wasn't trust, Azazel, it was fear." Azathunn's swirling flames spoke with a simple cadence, utter conviction and even a measure of care for the man before him as he worked to destroy the remaining memories that Sam still had of John. "John believed the angels, and he was right to, because his sons are a danger to all of us."

"A danger all the human souls that walk the Earth," Sam said in the same slow cadences Azathunn used, their voices as one.

With the lies in him, Sam felt whole again; his own soul was a starving child alone in the world. He had little left, so the fire they fed him built a new soul. Azathunn still spoke the truth, as he always had with Sam, and the truths about family were the last piece.

"A danger to all of you," Sam said, a yellow spark kindling in his eye, "even my family."

"Family provokes, you see?" the flames said to Azazel, but Azazel saw only a usurper, a favorite son.

Azathunn felt something far worse as a light brighter than his own fire lit up Hell.

 


	7. Fear is on Our Side

When he was close enough to see the face of the body on the table, Dean stopped and frowned. He was tall, his brown hair had grown long, but it wasn't him. It wasn't the man in the tavern in Sikeston, a demon. It wasn't even the man who chased him around the house every evening so Mary could rest for a while. The body before him, gaping and old, couldn't be John Bennett from Lawrence.

"Dad?"

"Again?" John asked calmly, his head turning to look at Dean, who wanted to look away and couldn't.

"Dad?" Dean repeated. "I'm here."

"Yeah, just like Sam was here. Both my sons in Hell despite the angel's promise. You are a lying nightmare, nothing more. Cut me to the bone again, but do not think my sons are the weapon that will turn me."

Dean came close to him now, finding his father's disbelief worse than anger. Pain, not pity, was taking control of Dean. He was in alone in prison at fifteen, blood on his hands and no one, least of all Sal, to show him right from wrong. He was seven again, abandoned to the streets of Kansas City by his father's relatives. He was four and a half, tugging at his father's hand, begging him to go back in the burning house and save Mom….

"You wouldn't do it," Dean said coldly. "I tried to save her – me, at four - and you just took Sam and ran from us."

"The house collapsed on both of you; the fire was so hot and the whole house came down…" John said weakly.

"Mom saved me. Not you. When I woke up in the field, you were gone. And you _never_ came looking for me."

"That's not true, Dean. I came back two years later. Joanna said you were lost." John wasn't crying. This was old ground.

"Your witch of a cousin 'lost' me - left me on the streets in Kansas City at five and half! I could have died. The Bennett name did die there."

"Joanna told me-"

"You didn't _try_ ," Dean said, every lonely day of childhood hurting again.

"I thought you were dead."

"Well I am now," Dean said bitterly. "But you know what's worse? You took me away from Sam; you hid Mom from him, you hid _me_ from him, you lied to him about all of us."

"It would have hurt him-"

"He hurt all his life, especially after you died. And when we finally met, we didn't know-" He stopped, his lips pressed tight together, unable to say that part.

"Then it's true," John said. "They tell me so many lies, the worst ones about you and Sam."

Dean shook his head. His anger rippled through him, turning to pain, more than he could handle. He held to what had always saved him.

"I love Sam. He's my brother and I love him. And he loves me." It was true, and it was all he could say to his father.

After a moment, John looked at him again, his eyes narrowing. He smiled, a vicious smile.

"You think you can fool me. Pull on some meatsuit, tell me a story I already know, make me think less of my sons?"

"I'm not a demon, Dad," Dean said sadly, but John kept going.

"Nothing you've done to me has touched my soul. You cut me apart each day and make me whole just to cut me apart again, and I still love them. I still love Mary, and I still love Samuel and I love my son Dean most of all." His voice cracked and still he kept talking. "I won't forget them, no matter how many years I lie here bleeding. Tell me Samuel has joined the demons willingly; tell me this half dead dandy in a blue vest is my son. I know you lie."

Dean bit his lip and stared; he was a child again, scolded by his father.

"My son died in that fire and I never forgave myself for it," John said after a moment. "I know two things about Dean that you will never understand: he was the greatest joy in my life, and he will always do what is right. I feared for Samuel, but never for Dean."

"Dad…" Dean reached down to take John's hand, covered in sticky blood. His tears flowed freely. "I came here to save you and Mom. And Sam."

"The angels will save me. Uriel said they'd come back in ten years."

"Angels? They put you here?"

"In exchange for keeping Samuel safe from the fire."

"But Sam-" He stopped there. "They could never hold Sam here, even if they did get hold of him."

John didn't respond. He was unconscious, or dead, Dean thought.

"I'll get you out, Dad, I swear. You and Mom and Sam."

He stood by his father, forgetting time, forgetting the dangers of Hell that howled outside the tower, and wondered how to forgive this man he'd wanted to find for so long.

"You're still here?" John said weakly from the table, conscious again.

Dean's voice was ragged with pain and thick with tears, but he knew what to do.

"You told Sam… not to spend time with that old lady in the next holler, not to learn her ways. But that's what saved us. Some prayer she knew nearly wiped out the bastard running this place, and I came here to finish the job and get Sam back. I don't care if you believe me, but I _am_ your son. I'm Dean, and I lived, and my life has been a pile of shit, apart from the couple of months when I met Sam and became his friend. I can't explain it, but we have some kind of ... we got to be close. And I'm here to save you and him both."

John had fought to keep his soul and his sanity intact – but this man before him was tough, angular, forthright…

"You are so much like her," John said with great effort, squeezing Dean's hand tight.

"Sam said that too," Dean broke down at the pain of that, and wept on his father's hand.

"Never saw a demon weep. That's a weakness of every Winchester."

"Sam does cry a lot," Dean confessed between tears and laughing sobs.

"No more time for your family drama," said the demon at the door.

"How do I get him out?" Dean asked.

She shrugged, disbelieving. "You're the one who found a way into Hell. You're the one we pinned our hopes on, Dean."

"You're no red-eye."

"Few of us are, Dean, but we know what threatens us all. What Heaven and Hell are planning will destroy us."

Dean looked down at his father, who was unconscious again. He felt his father's heartbeat slowing, almost imperceptible against his fingers.

_What do I do?_

***

Sam rose from the rack more fire than flesh. He could feel the flames running through his blood. He wanted to see more - more of his new world, more of his kingdom.

Azazel chased the lesser demons away. "Sycophants. They see only their short term gain."

"They're hungry, Azazel," Sam said. "They eat from me and trust I will reward them for that hunger."

"You're sounding more like the demon you always should have been. Why Azathunn didn't take you into Hell when you were an infant…"

"My mother wouldn't let him."

"Your mother was weak, like all humans. She had no idea what sort of children she was bearing, or how great they would become."

"She loved me."

"The old lies are the most persistent."

"She didn't love me?" Sam asked, doubting himself.

"She poured her lamp oil around your little crib, Sammy, and set the house on fire. What do you think?"

"Where is she now?"

"She's far from you."

***

_What do you do, Dean? You come into Hell with no plan, that's what you do. That's how you do everything. You stumble into a double-cross and walk out with the deed to a brothel. You fall for a tall, dark stranger and then find out you're fucking your own brother._

He rubbed his hands back and forth on his head, hoping to stir his brain somehow.

"Time's up, Dean," warned the demon. "They'll know you're here soon."

"What happened to your soul?" Dean asked her.

"What?!"

"What happened to it?" he repeated angrily.

"I still have it. It's changed."

"Then how are you different from me? Were you human once?"

"Long ago, if ever. I- we don't remember that after a few millennia."

"So if I exorcise you here, nothing happens."

"Not here, no."

"What if I exorcise my father's soul?"

"You know, Dean, we never tried something as foolish and brainless as that," the demon said scornfully.

 _There we go. That sounds familiar._   "Hang on, Dad – this just might work."

Dean began an exorcism of sorts, changing it in a few places where he thought a kinder word for his father might help, rather than a curse.

"What are you doing?" the demon asked fearfully.

"Risking it all on a bad idea for one last time in my sorry life."

He repeated the new-fangled counter-exorcism, added in the prayer he and John had said every night before Mary tucked him in, just for good measure, and watched as his father began to glow.

"Time to go, Dad. I'll deal with the angels if they have any questions."

He repeated it all a third time and felt his father's hand slip from his, vanishing in a blinding white light.

The demon cowered in a corner, blinded and near death.

"I'll be damned," Dean said.

***

Sam was far higher in the tower than where they'd kept John, but the light that shone through the windows was unmistakable – a searing white light that meant death for any demon that saw it. It hurt even to feel it on his skin. He rushed toward the source, while Azathunn hesitated.

When Sam made it down to the room where John had been, Dean was alone and smiling ruefully at the empty table.

"Twenty years without you for twenty minutes in Hell. I'm sorry, Dad."

He froze when he Sam burst in, looking worse than he had at the crossroads, but unburned, Dean wanted to just put his arms around him and win, for once.

"Sammy…" he said, and his voice gave out. The crossroads were a long lifetime ago, and two deaths back.

"Don't call me that," Sam snapped. "The preacher calls me that, and I don't like it."

"Sorry, Sam," he apologized instantly. He was in Hell, not a place for hope, he thought.

"You're… not supposed to be here," Sam said, not believing his eyes. "No demon can bring you in."

"I found my own way," Dean said, a bit too confidently.

"You can't get into Hell unless you die."

"Well, that was the part of the plan I liked the least."

Sam eyed him strangely, his head tilting, but there was no joy or fear in his expression. "You look like you died. So weak and lost." Sam's voice had changed to a more mocking tone that Dean didn't like. "Is it because you lost _me_?" he asked sarcastically.

That was when Dean saw how black his eyes were.

"I thought I… it's been a rough year, Sam. Let me see your eyes."

"It feels like _centuries_ , Dean. It all takes so long. The world is so slow," Sam said, sauntering toward Dean.

"Okay, now you're talking crazy…" _Black. All black. Shit. Did I get here too late?_  
  
"Your chest-" Sam said, all of his attention on Dean's bloodstained clothes.

"Oh, this…" Dean stammered, looking down at his still half-unbuttoned shirt and vest. He pulled them back, reopening the small scar below his heart. He wondered that he still bled in death.

"You really killed yourself." It was flat and factual.

"Sam, I came to get you out. Let's not waste time with cuts and bruises."

Sam had moved closer, studying Dean carefully, from his eyes, down along his neck, and finally to the wound, and the amulet hanging next to it.

"That's him," Sam said, reaching for the amulet. "All this time you've had him around your neck…"

Sam picked up the amulet, his fingers hot points of fire against Dean's chest. He turned it to lay in his palm, seeing the distorted face of his lord and savior, and rested his hand against Dean's chest. The blood from Dean's wound spread across the back of Sam's hand, fresh and warm, and with it, memories flooded into Sam – Dean's amulet hanging over him, Dean settling by him in the small, rumpled bed in Salina, Dean pressed warm against him, snoring. He saw Dean handing him the amulet in Sikeston, to keep it safe while Dean went into Hell. _But I came instead._

Dean saw this flood of memories from his blood too, images passing his eyes and then vanishing. He knew he was losing things, forgetting moments of his life but not why. He pushed Sam's hand away from him, but the memories flowed faster as they held on to each other, the contact unbroken. Sam fed on their past with the hunger of every demon – and Dean could barely keep track of the thoughts that raced through his mind, or even that he'd lost them forever; he only knew that Sam was disappearing from his thoughts and becoming more real in front of him.

Sam stood by a blazing fire, and saw the bodies on top of a log pyre: Michaela Gress, possessed by demons and killed by Dean's gun, and her husband with her. He could see himself at the fire, stoking it, and smell the awful stench of burning flesh and hair. Dean was somewhere behind him, still terrified of the flames that nearly swallowed him as a child. Sam's soul wove this memory back into what was left of the Samuel who'd come into Hell, and took more of his past from Dean.

He found the best memories were ones he'd long forgotten, memories of shared meat pies and bad whiskey in cheap saloons, and cold nights spent in a coach pressed against his brother. The kisses surprised him too – not that a man kissed him, but that he kissed with such passion, and that the same man was standing here now, in Hell.

"You!" Sam blurted, pulling his hand away, his eyes all black for a second, then Winchester green again.

***

Below them in the tower, Azathunn raged, for he could not cower - he was a god. But he could make Azazel cower and that he did, with pain that Azazel had never felt, not even when he fell from Heaven and his wings were torn from his soul.

"Get Samuel away from him!" he ordered.

Azazel knew better than to disobey the fire that was burning through him. He appeared in the room where John had been held, where he could smell Dean's blood. Sam's soul was lighter now, less contorted than they'd left it, and John was gone entirely.

"What did you - How are you here?!" he bellowed.

"You must be Azazel." Dean's confidence was roaring back with his brother by his side and a demon this upset. "Well now that I freed my father, I'll be getting Mom out next."

"I did that," Sam remarked to him casually. "First day I was here."

"You- oh, okay…. Good work, Sam." Dean's face was six types of perplexed, and hurt, and proud. "Then I'll save my brother," Dean said, turning back to Azazel. "Killing you would be a nice #3 on the list."

Azazel raged toward Dean, grabbing him and hurling them both across the room and out through the window.

Sam called out, looking for them in the smoke and clouds that swirled around, but they were gone.

***

"Samuel." Azathunn's voice was calm, a forced calm in the face of the threat he felt. "You cannot be with him. You have a different road now."

"He's my…"

"Brothers do not matter. They will always betray you."

"I wasn't supposed to be here," Sam said, trying to piece things together that made no sense.

"You came into Hell to save your own life."

"No, he told me to keep the amulet safe… We agreed to- We were-" Sam had no memories to support him, and fell silent.

"Samuel, listen to me. We're the same; you can trust that. We made the same choices."

"I'm nothing like you – you have the power to change things. You're free."

"Exactly! Free of family and all the binding ropes that hold us back. You want to be away from Dean. He is not your keeper, nor yours to watch over."

***

Azazel and Dean fell so far yet never seemed to hit the ground. After a while they weren't even falling, only struggling; Azazel's hands were on Dean's neck, and all his power raged against Dean, trying to rip him apart. Azazel's eyes glowed brilliant yellow with the fire of Azathunn, and yet Dean did not break or wither. He fought. When Dean saw the light fading in the demon's eyes he wrenched the fiery hands from his neck and kicked Azazel away. The tower was close, and Sam was in the tower. He ran in and up.

***

Images of his life intruded into Sam's confusion, memories freshly taken in. Dean was in all of them, watching with terrified eyes as an innocent woman in front of them burned to white ash and freed the fire demon inside her.

"You were there," Sam said to the flames that circled round him. "In the basement of the brothel in Salina. You were attacking us."

"I would not attack one so close to me," Azathunn said, veiling his truths with smoke.

"You burned us both."

"Why do you care, Samuel? It was all done to bring you here. With you, the Recurrence will end, and God will learn not to abandon us, not to ask of us what we cannot do, you and I."

"Aren't you God?" Sam said uncertainly.

"I am not God, and never will be. My brother and I agreed on one thing and that was to leave each other behind, to divide the universe in two. So I made this place. We even divided God's children, and they have divided you in turn. And _still_ humans think God speaks to them."

Sam was halfway to the door, walking slowly through the whirling fire that was Azathunn.

"Where is your brother, Azathunn?" Sam asked.

"He fears to come here," the fire said. "He has turned Dean against me rather than do it himself, because he is an eternal coward."

"But you were not afraid to go into his world?" Sam was at the door of John's cell now, and departed with the same slow gait that he'd paced the room with.

"I have his gift, this form. He did not think it would give me passage to his world, but it did," Azathunn said, lost in his own cunning and thoughts of his brother's treachery.

Sam broke into a run at the staircase. A hundred turns around the tower and he heard footsteps coming up toward him.

"Sam! Come on. Up is easier, for some reason." It was Dean, taking his hand again. "There's a whole lot they don't teach about Hell in Sunday school."

"Azathunn. He's up there," Sam said.

Dean slowed, catching his breath, and Sam rested against him. The memories flowed once more as Dean grasped his hand tight, filling up dark spaces of doubt and fear that the demons had opened. Sam saw other things now: a fight in a saloon in Salina, and Dean's face as they parted ways in Kansas City, Dean forever under Sal's control, a weak man.

"Do you remember the prayer we used against Az in Salina?" Dean asked. "You learned it from some old Cherokee witch."

"She wasn't a witch," Sam insisted.

"So you do remember. All of it?"

"No."

"Okay, give me a minute." Dean racked his brains, a useless task with a memory like his. _Why didn't I bring my notebook?_

Slowly the words came back to him, words about angels of fire and angels of ice, Appalachian lore that reached back farther than anyone remembered, or suspected. He whispered it to Sam twice, just to be sure, but it was too late. Down the staircase came a howling inferno, annihilating demons caught up in its wake, bearing down on Dean. It enveloped them and burned through them, and Dean was unprepared.

"Sam!" Dean yelled, his soul catching fire inside him, a pain he'd never imagined.

"Let me do it, Lord," Sam asked. "The wrath of brothers is the wrath of devils."

The fire took him in and fed his anger and his need to be right, to be known in the world. It pulled away from Dean, who watched in horror as the fire burned inside Sam, yellow-eyed now like Azazel, who was with them on the stairs.

"Sam…" Dean begged.

Sam leaned in so close to Dean now. "Are you truly my brother, Dean Winchester?"

"Yes I am, Sam Winchester," Dean said gruffly, not sure of what else he could do. "Since before you were born. I saw them bring you home, my puny little brother."

"Well, Dean," Sam whispered, "there's only one thing I can say. _I got stronger._ "

Sam pressed his eyes shut to gather this strength and when he opened them, they were his again. His mouth curled up just a bit. They were invincible together. Dead, and in Hell, but invincible.

They called out the prayer in unison, an ancient firesong from the hills where John raised Sam. Widow Aulty had only suspected this of Sam when she taught him; she knew only one brother and died before she ever met the other. The ancient words were _their_ words, a weapon only they could wield, against the only creature it could stop.

The Winchesters recited the words once and the flames around them dimmed and faded; twice they told the story and Azazel's faith was shaken forever; three times and there was a man beside them without his cloak of flames, dark-eyed like Tez but taller, stronger – a bloodstained fratricide with the striking wide eyes and long nose of the amulet. He was drained and shaken, a simple creature for a moment.

Azazel stood looking at him, betrayed beyond all measure by a god that was no god now.

***

Dean and Sam ran before Azathunn could recover, before the fire burned again.

Up and up they went, away from Azathunn, until Dean was exhausted. "Just how tall is this tower?"

"They say it will reach to Earth and open the gates of Hell forever," Sam said.

"Let me guess, one of Azathunn's ideas."

"No, it was Azazel's. His and the angel he works with."

"Always running through some dark tower and never fighting; I feel like a gothic heroine in those awful novels Sal used to read to me. All you need is a white dress."

"We _were_ just fighting," Sam reminded him. "And why am _I_ wearing the dress?"

"Fair enough. How do we get out of here then? Is it open, this gate?"

"No, Dean, the tower's not complete."

"Sonofabitch!"

"You don't have an escape plan?"

"No, Sam, I usually just run. At least in my brothel I knew all the secret exits."

A roar went up below them, the guttural voice of unending fire reignited, and that was enough impetus for Sam to try Dean's way out and just run.

Dean took Sam's hand again, losing memories faster than he could realize what was happening to him and they made their last dash; soon, they saw light above them. The walls fell away into black clouds, and Dean held tight to his brother, feeling Sam's grip slipping as he fell behind. The light above was closer and the running was easier now, but behind him he heard Sam cry out his name.

He turned and was alone on the last step, the hand gone from his, Sam gone. He knew he had been holding Sam tight, but his brother had vanished. Dean dreamt this once, as a child: he took his mother's hand to lead her home but she was not there when he awoke. He felt Sam's hand there, but his own hand was empty and Sam's voice was gone.

***

Before Dean stood a deeply serious man, a man who worked all day and all night and showed the strain in his short temper and severe dress. With his dark suit, sunken cheeks and tired middle age, he seemed like a guest Dean might have faced in his club before, someone his charm could squeeze an extra $10 from on a good night. He watched Dean approach.

"You are a quite a piece of work," said the man.

 _That I am_ , Dean thought. "And who are you?"

"I know very few people by sight, Dean. But you… you I remember."

A cold settled inside Dean. _More supernatural bullcrap._

"They all turn their faces away from me, claim not to know me at all." He was sorrowful at this as if he hadn't quite come to terms with such mistreatment.

Dean was thinking of changing his question from "Are you God?" to something else.

"But you, Dean-" He paused, studying Dean's face. Dean had no question worth asking in the face of the man's intensity. "You look right at me. You seek me out over and over, and still your eyes don't see who I am."

"I came here to save my brother-"

"And now you are _killing_ my REAPERS," the man said, chilling calm over a river of rage.

"I'm sorry" slipped out.

"No, you aren't, Dean. You don't know what you've done, or what you are capable of. You _forget_."

Dean closed his mouth. He knew the man in front of him.

"You're a person?"

"I am a need manifested. When your brothers fought against each other in their little war, I took them by the hundreds of thousands. They knew who they were dealing with. They welcomed me, some of them. They didn't take up foul weapons and rip holes in the universe."

"I lost Sam."

"Samuel is not lost," Death said, his voice no longer furious but old.

"I couldn't get him out."

"At the narrow passage there is no brother and no friend," Death said. He watched the human soul before him as it tried to make sense of him. "You have a job to do, Dean. It means leaving Samuel to his own path. You are not your brother's keeper, and your foolish adventures have put both of you in greater danger – you've locked your souls into these forms."

_I really wish that just once, a higher power would come with a translator._

"You will return, as you are now. The angels and the demons will be waiting for you and you won't even know why. It will all be so much harder from now on."

Dean swallowed and asked softly, "What do I do?" He no longer looked at Death.

"You do what you and your brother promised you would do. You take the devil from God's mind. You undo the flaws of your own creation."

Dean's head was hanging down now, aching as if it would split open.

"The world needs mending, and you two are the only ones who can fix it. Azathunn and Tez have abandoned their promise, but you might yet drive them out. Lucifer and Michael will have to wait."

Around them, the world was beginning to lighten. Dean could see trees outlined black against inky blue, and stars beyond that. He was no longer in Hell, and Sam was far from him again.

"I can't stop two demi-gods. I can't do it without Sam."

"Are you afraid that Sam will fail? Or that you will?"

"Bring Sam back to me."

"I never take sides, Dean. But if I did, I would take the only side there is."

Death's face was lit by a soft yellow glow, and when Dean turned, he could see a house, not more than fifty yards behind him, and a woman with a lantern raised, coming toward them.

"Remember to bring your coins when we meet again, if you expect to cross," said Death. "Remember that you both made the promise. You won't finish it all this time."

"You said I've been here before – when?"

"Only God and I know who you've been in all the eons and he can't say, having cut his own tongue."

"You seem to have yours," Dean ventured, but it wasn't bravery, only desperation returning.

"My job is to still tongues, my own above all."

***

"Keep his tongue still or he'll choke," said the woman. "And hold the lantern straight. No sense spillin' oil on him and burning him to ash when we just saved him."

"He's got the devil in him, speaking in tongues like that," said a less kindly voice, an older man.

"Father, he's a fellow soul, and we will return him to life if we can."

"Why is he shaking like that? It could be possession."

"Nonsense. It's a fit – my brother had them. Hold him still and it will pass."

Eventually, Dean's body stopped shaking. He was stiff, painful, exhausted, drenched in sweat and pinned to the ground in front of a small home amid a grove of trees. His mind tried to grasp what reality was around him this time. It was the street where he'd been talking with Death moments before, now lit with the cold gray light of early morning.

"Whea- whe-a-"

"Take the spoon out, Carl, for heaven's sake!"

Carl did as she told him, still convinced the man whose arm he knelt on was a tool of Satan, sent up from Hell.

"Where am I?" Dean choked out. "Is he still here?"

"No one here but you, and us. He's seeing the imps, ain't he?"

"Hush your superstitious twaddle," the woman scolded the man. "You're outside of Memphis, Mr. Campbell. Do you have your eyes? Can you see?"

"It can't be you," Dean said softly as he looked at her. _Even Death isn't this cruel._

"Let me fetch the Bibles, Mrs. Tyler, and get the rest of the Temperance League members out here to pray."

"Praying won't help this one. I've seen his soul, and it's black as pitch."

 


	8. That Peculiar Winchester Notion

_Two weeks past Epiphany, 1875 – Memphis, Tennessee_

"Miss Wells, would you pray with us?"

"Over this man? He sounds far beyond redemption - by your own admission, Mrs. Tyler."

Miss Wells was the local chairwoman of the Women's Christian Temperance League and found Mrs. Tyler, the representative from Salina, Kansas, to be of little use.

"He has suffered much for his sins, but I knew him once and I would see him reformed."

"He appears to have been possessed by a demon. He cries out the names of angels and demons and prophets amid his other blasphemies, Azazel and Satan or something like that. And then he calls for the prophet Malachi and for Tez, whatever un-Christian name that is."

"SAM!" Dean screamed as he returned briefly to consciousness, and they doused him with holy water.

"Samuel was a friend of his, back then. There was talk of…"

"Talk of what?"

"It was idle gossip. I will not repeat it. Suffice to say he ran a club open to all gentlemen who could pay, a whorehouse, and he employed Indians, and women with light skin and dark."

"Am I to be impressed that he is liberal in his opportunism? Are all races to rejoice that they may sully themselves in drink and vice without prejudice?"

"Will you pray with us or not?" Mrs. Tyler asked, quickly exasperated when faced with moral rectitude greater than her own.

"That I can do. And _I_ will lead the prayers, thank you," said Miss Wells.

***

Outside the small building where the Temperance League had set up its headquarters, a man knelt in the light snow and looked down into a basement room, not quite sure he could believe what he saw there, even after all he had seen in his years. He rolled the balled up paper around in his hand.

Molly had left the note wedged in Malachi's door the day before. "He is not here," was all she wrote. _As you said. Molly, he returned. I apologize for doubting you. You are more of a prophet than the angel is. Before my eyes is Dean Winchester, a miracle._  
  
***

Tez knocked on the door of the small house and inquired after a Mr. Winchester, but got only confused looks from the man who answered.

"Recently arrived? Weakened and in need of medical help?" Tez asked helpfully.

"You mean Mr. Campbell?" said the man at the door, suspicious of the strange man.

"Yes, one and the same. He sometimes gives out odd names – it's part of his syndrome. I have what he needs, if you could show me to him."

He tapped his doctor's bag authoritatively, smiled broadly and was irresistible from then on. He was shown to the basement.

***

"Mr. Campbell?" he asked, leaning close to Dean's ear.

"He keeps calling out Jazz and Taz-" said the man.

"Az and Tez," he corrected gently, looking at the men and women gathered in curiosity around Dean and the strange doctor.

"Beg pardon?" said another man in the group.

"Tez," he repeated slowly, " – one of his delusions. He thinks he's friends with an ancient god. Calls him Tez."

"Well then who's Az?" the man continued, fascinated.

"The evil brother."

"There's always an evil brother," the man nodded to his friend, who nodded back knowingly, then stood aside as Mrs. Tyler came down the stairs one at a time, gripping both railings tightly.

"Dean, I don't want to be here any more than you do," Tez whispered in Dean's ear. "But I can't just vanish. Wake up and do something."

Dean stirred, then screamed loudly as he sat up, mouth wide and eyes crazed. Mrs. Tyler slipped off the last tread at that scream and only just caught the arm of one of her volunteers. Both of them collapsed slowly and comically, and the rest gathered round to help. Dean screamed again.

"Good enough. Shut up now and hold on." Dean was in Malachi's house that same instant.

***

 

"I lost Sam!" were the first words he got out after he stopped heaving.

"That you found him at all is a miracle, but he needs to stay there," Tez said calmly.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Dean yelled.

"Dean, do not speak to him without respect," Malachi scolded.

"You stay out of this, wingman."

Tez waved Malachi off.

"It was Death got him out," Malachi said, not backing down. "The Garrison is worried."

"Worried? That Death is taking sides? I'd be worried too, but Death never takes sides. Ever. You just let me know what Uriel is up to. And he _will_ speak to you – he knows you bear my messages," Tez added before Malachi could complain.

"And what about Sam?" Dean interrupted.

"This is _all_ about Sam," Tez explained, "He's in Hell because Uriel and Azazel conspired to end the Recurrence."

"So we don't come back?"

"I don't know any more, Dean. You were never supposed to go into Hell and I warned you not to. I don't know if the Recurrence will ever happen again, or if it's just you now, on your own. It won't matter in any case, because you won't be able to do what you promised. You failed, just like we always do, you and I."

Dean was halfway to believing what Tez said, but Death's words were still fresh in his mind.

________________________________________

Sam paid for his disobedience with a pain that never left him. He fought back of course, when Dean vanished right in front of him, as Azathunn engulfed him and burned the new memories out of his mind.

But Sam had won back a century of stolen memory, all because his brother wanted to touch him and hold him tight. Dean had come into Hell to save _him_ , and it was half his humanity back in one blow. The demon part of him roiled in agony as it tried to retake control.

Azazel suffered more – he had seen his god extinguished and felt the flame inside him dim as well. Azathunn was fallible, and worse, vulnerable, and now so was he. Seventeen of his yellow-eyed converts went missing in the first month as rumors of red-eyed revolt spread through Hell. It mattered little that Azathunn was the fire of Hell once more, or that Samuel was still with them. A fallen god could not be put back on the altar. Another would have to take his place.

Worst of all in Azazel's view, Azathunn did not kill Samuel outright for his treachery. He seemed in fact to take an even closer interest in him, to the exclusion of his most loyal supporter and ally, the Yellow-Eyed King of Hell.

 _Until he takes that title from me as well,_ Azazel thought. He twisted five new souls into demons, and brought a hundred more into Hell that month, some before their ten-year due date _and none for you, crossroads monkeys. I won't lose to you._  
  
________________________________________

_January 31, 1875 – Memphis, Tennessee_

Dean had recovered, but he knew there was one thing that could not recover. Molly showed up at Malachi's house after the dinner hour to ask for news, and Dean's living body opened the door.

Molly stood on the porch, caught between shock and a welling anger, between the impossible return of her friend and the very man whose self-centered obsession had killed her husband. Dean knew of nothing he could say. She'd always seen behind the face he showed the customers at the Impala Club; she'd seen him devastated, seen him deeply in love. He had nowhere to hide from this woman.

She turned her back on him, there on the porch, with the door open, letting winter in.

"Molly…"

"Don't say anything, Mr. W. You have no excuses."

"I failed."

"Then you and I are both alone." She let down her guard and accused him outright. "Why, Mr. Winchester? You knew what it meant to have that knife around, and still you cared more for Samuel dead and gone than Simon here and alive."

Dean stood silent and lonely in the doorway as the wind blew cold and damp with river air, slicing through his clothes.

"What was it then?" Molly continued, speaking to Malachi's yard and the glistening stars overhead. "Love? Or worse? You did such good things for people in Salina, always so clean and proper and kind to the girls, and then you take him up to your room and never come back down to greet the guests. I thought he'd changed you for the better when I couldn't."

"Molly, don't."

"And why not? You knew who he was from the minute the club burnt to the ground, and you were all affection and care for weeks after. You were inseparable."

"NO!" Dean was wrenched apart, his oldest friend condemning something he had no choice about. "Sam's gone now."

"I don't _want_ him gone!" Molly said bitterly, turning back to Dean.

The months of wintery dark had worn her down, and she kept herself in black from head to toe, four months of mourning yet to come. He was the same man she'd met – weak, foolish, and unrepentant in spite of all his penitence. But now something dark had returned to his face – something she'd seen leave him the night Sam arrived; a specter of a lonely man, the one who was left behind, forever on his own.

Before she left, Dean was able to hold her in his arms on Malachi's sofa. She said nothing more about Sam, and Dean said "I'm sorry" close to a hundred times, but it wouldn't be right again for a long while.

***

"Dying for him was the first mistake," Tez said, angering Dean with the casual way he spoke about Dean's choices.

"I made no mistakes. I did what I had to do," Dean rationalized.

"Well, that's true. But I didn't say it was _yo_ _ur_ first mistake. It was mine." He ignored Dean's eyes rolling. "There's a delicate balance to things. The birth of all Creation – it isn't easy, Dean. Some souls never want to part from God, some never want to rejoin once they feel freedom. I knew Az wanted his own life, but he wasn't able to leave me even when the others drove him off. I chose to die rather than live without him or leave him alone. I followed him, when no one else would."

"Just one little phrasebook to translate your crap. It would help so much."

"God isn't perfect Dean. Every new beginning shatters the universe, and we feel that. Some want to return to the way things were, some want to begin their journey anew. Some want to stay together, some want to be apart."

"I got along fine alone."

"But you never wanted it."

It was a truth Dean hadn't allowed into his mind very often. Sam was his one connection and he clung to it.

"And Sam, he wants to be free of me?"

"Yes-"

"No," Dean cut him off. "Free, but with me."

"Yes." Tez wondered for a moment if Dean was different from him, if he might be able to save things, even without Sam.

Dean put his head down. When he raised it again, his anger had won out.

"You tell me to ignore my brother, you send me into some fake Hell TWICE, and now you tell me I've destroyed my future and the future of all of humanity, just because I love my brother?"

" If you prefer to wage war against Sam instead of forgetting him, I'm sure Azazel and Uriel will oblige you. They've probably wiped out his soul by now and made him a demon."

"I have had enough of suicidal gods telling me what I have to do. Everything you've done has been to play it safe – what kind of behavior is that from a – what _are_ you?

"We aren't so different, Dean. You hesitated when Pendergast said he loved you. You hesitated when Sam arrived in your brothel. You let Sal pull you back into the years of abuse and self-hatred she raised you in, and it drove Sam away."

"I went to him. I saw the errors I'd made."

"No, Dean, you just wanted him back. You went into Hell at the cost of an innocent life, and had no way to get Sam out. Fate and God are against you – why are all the world's efforts to stop you not enough to bring you to your knees?"

"Because all the world's efforts are not more than Sam."

________________________________________

"The Yellow-Eyed race is created in me, chosen and raised above all other demons for my faith in Azathunn, gifted with His all-consuming fire, charged with carrying out His plan for Hell."

Azazel paused, expecting the red-eyed factions to protest, but there was not a whisper.

"Do not think Heaven will hesitate to raise an army of their own," Azathunn began, "now that they have the brother back in their hands. We will give Heaven the war they desire, and wipe humanity from existence. As I created you, so you shall shape their souls to your likeness and they will fight as demons. The Recurrence is ended - we are free to take them for our own!" Azathunn's voice was a ferocious howling fire that could no longer be contained.

"Heaven will take Dean now, and punish him, and all who know him, for what he did," Azazel continued over the roar of the flames, addressing the hordes of demons arrayed before the tower. "Turn the tide now against Heaven and let God know that we will be heard again."

"And this one, brother to Lucifer and Azathunn, will take his seat next to them when we've made him ready," cried Azazel, his eyes flaring yellow. "And you will suffer so much more before that day comes," he said softly into Sam's ear.

The delay did not sit well with the demons, but Azazel had tested the boundaries of Hell and taken power from a god, and he would not go back to the masses below him. He had found his new weapon.

***

Sam sat alone in the room where he'd been tortured and burned, stripped of his mind and his soul. He recalled very little from the last few months, but still sometimes he felt a hand pulling his. Azazel was against him and his brother now, that much was clear, but Azathunn still controlled all of Hell.

"I am Sam Winchester. I am not a demon. I am a man."

"You are doomed. You will be unnecessary very soon, and if by some miracle you do walk the earth again, I will find you and tear you apart all over again," Azazel said with a cool hatred that Sam found useful.

"And anger your Lord?" Sam asked slowly.

"He has won already. What do I care if he's angry?"

"Why does he like me better than you?" Sam dared.

Azazel's eyes flared, but he kept his exterior calm.

"Azathunn likes all rebels. He told me of Lucifer, and how he hoped Lucifer would lead a war for him. But Lucifer, like you, could not take his mind off his own brother. After what happened to Lucifer, we waited an eternity. Azathunn found me, deep in prayer, and spoke to me. He gave me a way to rule the demons, and then he found _you_." Azazel's hatred for Sam was a brilliant fire shining through his shattered faith. "He hoped you would lead us, but I don't think you can."

"I'm a kid from Lawrence, Kansas."

"You are a pig rooting in the mud, like all of your race. That throne he grooms you for was to be Lucifer's, until Michael put him in the Cage."

_Why don't I kick your ass? Dean would kick your butt all the way to the top of the Tower. You already lost to him once, and you'll lose to him again._

"Cat got your tongue, Sammy?"

Sam lunged at him and Azazel laughed as Sam beat him, hard. He reached into Sam and took his time in Lawrence from him forever, a gaping hole in his mind.

"Sorry, Sammy, I fight dirty."

***

Azathunn was in the room now, fire everywhere.

Sam propped himself up on his elbow on the hard floor where he lay.

"You'll learn," said Azathunn.

"Learn what? That you fear us? Because I think you fear your own brother more."

"He is no longer my brother."

"Show me your face."

The flames swirled, but Azathunn made no response.

"You looked like one of us," Sam continued.

"I am a hundred thousand times greater."

"They all say that," Sam said. "Every monster, every werewolf, every demon I ever killed thought it was bigger, badder, better. But they weren't." He waited for a reaction, but Azathunn was far more experienced at this game than Sam.

"You're a man without his brother," Sam kept digging. "You're pain and consuming need and you walled yourself away from the one person who can end this."

"I am fire!"

"Brothers forgive. They stick together. They put everything else aside when they need each other."

"He made me kill him!" Azathunn voice came from every direction, pain that reached deep into Sam. "Is that what brothers do?!" The flames raged so hot that Sam could only flee.

________________________________________

Februa  
"How do I get him back then? If he's dead?"

"You can't, Dean."

"No. Find a way. You may have made the wrong choice, but that isn't the only choice."

"This obsession with your brother has to end," he said, with the tone he'd used in his own mind for his entire life.

"Apparently you haven't been listening. Tell me again how we got this way."

"You killed yourself."

"Boy did the Bible get that backwards."

"You're not Abel. Abel is an idea, a memory, of me."

"It's all about you, isn't it?" Dean snapped.

"You made him kill you. You gave him no choice." Tez looked at him, anguished, waiting for the truth to appear in Dean's head. When it did, Dean was angry, then embarrassed, then angry again, his lips twitching like he wanted to say something.

"How did we get this way, coming back over and over?"

"Every soul comes back. That's what God is. Learning. Knowing. God decrees nothing; he only watches with infinite curiosity to see what you do with life."

"Tez…"

"What should I aim for, the level of a children's book?"

"No, I can-"

" _Our_ souls come back until we make things right. Az and I failed. Lucifer and Michael failed. You two – you just failed."

"I'm still alive."

Tez shook his head.

"I love my brother. That's one point for my side. So how do I make it right?"

"You made a promise."

"Then I'll make it again."

"Do you remember what you said?"

Dean thought for a moment. "Dammit."

"And Sam has to make that promise too. There's no way it can happen twice."

"Let me try."

"I'm not stopping you."

Dean cleared his throat and spoke as ineloquently as he ever had.

"I, Dean Winchester, promise to you – God – that I will make it right, and Sam will too."

Nothing happened.

"I can do better."

"I hope so," Tez said. "You are promising to remove the fears that shaped humanity at its creation."

"How am I supposed to do that?" Dean asked, exasperated.

Tez looked at him patronizingly.

Dean knelt on Malachi's threadbare carpet, distracted by the pain in his arms; all his old burns had ached since he came back. He chose his words carefully.

"God? Sam and I will make it right. We won't give up, and we won't fight each other either. There's a third way in there somewhere and we'll find it. And I love Sam. He's the one I wanted back, not Dad. He's the one I needed, not Sal. He's the one who loved me as I was, didn't blink when I said I ran a brothel, taught me how to hunt, and showed me what courage it takes to walk away. I'm a better man because of him."

The house creaked in the wind that had risen through the evening. Dean stayed knelt in prayer, tears for his lost brother running slowly across his interlaced fingers.

 _You are unique, Dean, you and Sam._ Tez closed his eyes and sat quietly, suffering with him.

________________________________________

Azazel was rarely seen in the years that followed the Great Speech, and the yellow-eyed demons stuck close to the tower as it grew, rather than risk a civil war. Rumor was that Azazel had gone into the roots of the Tower, to what lay buried there, but not even his allies thought he was crazy enough to believe Lucifer could be found. Sam retreated into ever-higher places in the tower, trying to think of a way to forestall the loss of all his memories.

A few images remained of a blonde woman who screamed and a dark-haired man who kissed him and held him tight. And again and again, he saw a man in a gold-brocade vest reaching out to shake his hand. The same man sometimes was tied to a signpost and screaming his name, over and over again, his face twisted in horror at what he was witnessing. The man's eyes burned with a yellow fire, reflecting the inferno in front of him. Pain came with that memory, the pain of having his soul ripped from his body and dragged into Hell. And just before it went dark, he saw a giant, in armor and feathers, his face striped red, fingertips red like blood, reaching out for him and calling Azathunn's name.

"He came for you, Azathunn, not for me," Sam realized. But there was no one to tell.

***

_I am Samuel. I left the man in the vest because I thought I could save our family alone. I left him behind and he killed himself to save me. Why can't I remember his name?_

_I am Samuel. I want my brother back. I want to be with him. There is nothing else that matters. God, give us a chance. We don't know what we're doing._  
  
The tower remained silent, except for the ever-growing shriek of souls that stretched out to infinity as the demon army grew.

***

_February 14, 1875_

_Dean. Your name is Dean. Okay, Dean, I won't remember you tomorrow, but for now, I know who you are. You're my big brother. I lost you and found you and lost you again and now you're dead too because of ... this thing between us. I want to find you. Are you still here in Hell? I can't feel you._

________________________________________

Day after day, Dean tried new ways to persuade God, not knowing what he was supposed to promise.

_Sammy, I tried praying to God and I got nothing. I've got a half-god and a very questionable angel watching me and Molly hates me and I can't get you back. I love you, Sam. I said that to God but I guess he didn't believe it. I want my brother back. Shit, I can hardly breathe._

Dean opened one eye and looked around the room. Tez was gone, and Malachi with him.

________________________________________

_February 28, 1875_

 

 

 

_Sam, listen. You were right all those times I said you weren't, and you had to go into Hell – it's just who you are. I can live with that. I can live with you down there and me up here as long as I know you're alive out there. We're family, forever._ | _You can't keep dying for me, Dean, and I can't keep asking you to, making you feel like dying will fix things. I don't know how I made it twenty-two years without you but I need to know you're alive, wherever you are. We're family, forever._  
---|---  
  
   
________________________________________

Malachi was in Heaven when it happened, but no angel ever spoke about what they heard or saw that day. Uriel clamped his hand over Michael's mouth to stop the destruction that would have followed on his fury. Lucifer raged against the fiery walls of his prison, but it held tight under its seals. Azathunn simply exhaled, his plans laid to waste, and Tez, alone on a cold night, knew it too: that not all was lost.

***

_Memphis, Tennessee - February 28, 1875_

_It worked._

Dean was overcome by an emotion he didn't have words for – he wasn't alone.

_So why am I alone?_

There was no Sam – not there, not then, not in Memphis or Tennessee or anywhere that Dean could sense, but Dean knew he was coming. He looked through the house, he listened as hard as he could, he ran across the thin strip behind Malachi's house to the bluff and looked at the icy river, the far shore where Arkansas began, the grey-blue sky of winter stretching from horizon to horizon, but still nothing. The river rolled on, swollen with rain and snowmelt, but Dean turned back.

"He's here," Dean insisted to the empty walls of Malachi's tiny house, and pressed his hands to his face, to keep the scream inside.

***

_Lawrence, Kansas, February 28, 1875_

Sam was not in Lawrence either, and then he was, on the very spot he was born.

He staggered and fell on the barren soil on that quiet afternoon, rolling on his side in pain, gasping under a clear blue sky dusted with white wisps high up, the storm still a day off. The trees said it was nearly spring, the earliest hint of it on a few early redbuds along the street. Nothing grew in the empty lot where he lay, but it was more alive than Hell ever had been.

A dozen yards away at the edge of the dead area, a rusted metal stake leaned inward, no longer burdened by its sign, which had hung there scorched for many years, then fallen to the ground, and then been stolen by children who dared each other to run by the empty lot at night. It still said "Bennett" on it when they stole it, barely legible under the charred paint, the name that John Winchester was born to, and that he'd given his wife and sons. Like the sign, that name had been burned and discarded, first by Mary, then John and Samuel, hiding from the fire in the Tennessee hills, and finally by Dean when his cousins deserted him.

Now, Sam wished the sign were there because he wasn't at all sure where he was – but he knew there'd been a sign, once. He could recall every minute of the fire, every second that he'd been torn up by the things in Hell. He knew how he'd gotten the twisted dark scar on his chest, but not how his hair had grown so long. He pushed himself up on one elbow, then onto all fours, his face and clothes covered in the gray dust of the empty lot.

_And I promised someone something. Where is he?_

The man he wanted was not there. Sam asked the first person he saw who didn't back away from him in fear, a man who looked worn out by life itself. The man said only, "You're back where you started" and handed Sam two coins to help him on his way. Sam had so many more questions, but the man strolled on purposefully, his hand firmly on his walking stick.

 


	9. Push and Pull

_March 20, 1875 – Crooked Creek, Brown County, Indiana_

In the light snowfall of a dim afternoon, Dean stopped by a pond in the woods to drink. The forest around him was still drab, the trees not yet awakened, a darker gray on gray dusted with late, wet snow. He was cold, inside and out, and empty-handed after weeks of searching for his brother. Rumors of a bizarre murder of two brothers in Elkinsville gave him a reason to hunt again, and hunting was Sam's world. He felt closer to Sam that way, and thought maybe Sam might be hunting again too.  He could feel Sam in the world, but n

The flakes were few but heavy, rafted together in large swirling clumps that landed and melted away. A few skidded across his face and he shook them off. The trail was quiet, and for that he was grateful. Afternoon was indeterminate under the flat gray sky; it was six and some hours from the time he first woke in the predawn dark to the time the chimes had sounded midday from the church tower, and now he was a few hours north out of town in the forest, one small rest and one small meal since noon. He guessed it was near three o'clock, but there were no shadows to help him. A large clump of flakes swirled into his eyes and as he wiped his face clear, he stopped and thought; the space behind his hand was safe and warm.

He could imagine Sam's touch, still – the hand he'd grasped and shaken in Salina when they first met, and held tight to in Creve Coeur before Sam let go and tumbled from the train. Sam's hands were all over him in the hot, dark shed in Sikeston as they grappled with impending loss by seizing hold of each other before plunging into Hell. Most intensely of all, Dean recalled running up a set of stairs with Sam's hand in his, then losing him. It was clear to him that he had gaps in his memory, that he'd lost something in Hell; Sam was still there in all the right places, but days were gone, hours, moments together, photo albums lost to a fire.

Dean stayed there behind his hand where he wasn't alone, listening to the water pour out of the pond into the creek, down over the black stone steps like a staircase in the hillside, down from the edge of the pond toward the valley that deepened southward.

***

He heard the footsteps coming long before anyone appeared, and a horse clopping along the stones of the shoreline. Dean raised his head and watched the path along the shore where it curved around a point and vanished. The man was coming from the west with a steady, slow step that slipped on the rocks once, and then regained its rhythm.

He was a tall man when he appeared in the distance, in odd clothes and a large hat that kept the swirling, thickening snowfall off his face and head but also cast them in deep shadow. He walked stiffly, as if his legs were still new, and led the bony horse behind him. When he finally looked up, he was closer to Dean than he thought and stopped abruptly, wary of the stranger in the path ahead of him.

Dean tried to judge his age, but it was hard to say. He had long unkempt hair, longer than Dean's, and a bedraggled beard that still held traces of a fall he'd taken a few miles back – mud, a torn piece of brown leaf curled in the hairs, and a bit of blood where he'd scraped his face. He was gaunt and twitched nervously.

"When you meet the man, be careful," the stranger said, hands curling around the horse's halter to keep upright.

Dean watched him warily.

***

He stood there on the shore, in the way, a man in a worn vest and coat. Others had blocked his path, passed him in fear or with derisive laughter, or tried to slip the pack from his horse - those people he punished severely for their thievery. But the man ahead of him was too weak and tired to be a danger. _Why am I stopped? Move on. Move on._

After a moment, he spoke again to the man in his path: "You are bent."

It was an honest observation, but the man in his way only looked at him, puzzled. He leaned against the horse for support. _So tired. I can't get past him. Why is he blocking my way?_  
  
A powerful memory stirred inside his mind, a memory of a man he once knew, who was bold and alive and obscene and cultured all at once, and not this bent man on the shore. Not this man with dead eyes, a discontented curl to his mouth, and a loose grip on his gun.

"Move on," he said, and the man on the shore stood there in his way, unmoving.

***

" _You_ move on, stranger," Dean replied after a pause in which the flakes stopped falling entirely.

His hunger, or his own mind, or more likely some twisted demon sent to torture him was to blame for his visions now. An evil thing had found a man who might have been Sam in another life, but who was a falsehood here by the pond – _that_ evil was to blame.

Once, a demon had impersonated his father, and he'd felt that man's touch on his skin. It had spoken to him, held him, kissed his head just like his father had. But it wasn't John, who was long since gone to Hell and not long ago set free; it was a demon moving Dean to where the demon wanted him. This wasn't Sam either, any more than the tall man at the tavern in Evansville had been, or the green-eyed farmer whose fields he'd cut through in search of food.

_They weren't Sam, and this isn't Sam because Sam is not to be found._

"Get out of here!" Dean yelled, rage and fear all knotted together. His voice raced across the lake, startling birds, and then vanished into the distance.

The man with the horse flinched and stepped back a few feet, yanking the horse with him. He turned slowly and walked back around the edge of the point and disappeared. Dean listened for a long time until his footsteps faded. The sky was darker now, and the cold sank deeper in.

***

The man with the horse headed back along the lakeshore nearly two hundred yards before he stopped and turned around.

"I'm going that way," he said to no one in particular as he went again in the direction he'd been heading; the horse managed to make clear its impatience.

Around the bend in the distance came the man who'd yelled at him, walking with a stick, his heavy black coat showing every year of its age. It bore the scars of several fights and even more nights it had served as a poor bed on the rocky ground. It clung to the man in the cold afternoon, making him seem like Death approaching.

When the man was close enough, it was time to make it clear. "I'm not going back," Sam said.

"Get out of my way," Dean answered immediately.

This man seemed puzzled. He squinted at Dean and set his mouth. "No."

This confounded Dean – the words were childishly petulant, not the reaction he'd expected, and not one he was familiar with from a demon, or from Sam.

The man before Sam likewise refused to move, and this made no sense. He had a place to reach, or so he thought. A new idea was forming, even as he spoke – that he'd found what he was here to find. Memory failed him again and again, but the man blocking his path could be the one he wanted and now he wasn't sure what to do.

"I need to be here," Sam continued, "and I don't know why, but I found what I was looking for and I'm not going to back down."

"Well neither am I," Dean countered quickly, wondering what sort of demon game he was caught in now.

They stood there, by the cold water, neither giving ground. They were closer this time, and Dean fought against his weak hopes. The short arc of Sam's nose was there, the steady gaze a bit more manic. But this demon leading his horse along the shore had an unusual assortment of clothes that fit so poorly they had to be stolen. His gloves were threadbare, and his fingers showed grayish between the strips that still held them on. A somewhat newer scarf kept his neck warm, but the beard was tangling in it, and it too had traces of blood and dirt.

***

"Will you let me pass?" Dean asked.

The man in front of him didn't answer. He seemed unable to speak.  
 _  
If I'm wrong, and this is Sam, and I chase him away…_ Dean struggled with the thought that he could be lucky, this lucky, twice.

"Sam?" Dean asked, his voice husky and worn, no other question worth asking.

"Me?"

"Where were you?"

"Where are we now?" Sam asked, as confused as ever.

"Southern Indiana somewhere," Dean said, certain of that and nothing more.

Sam thought for a very long time and the snowflakes reappeared, in ever-heavier swirls.

"I was in Lawrence."

Dean had bitten the inside of his cheek to bleeding and his fingers were numb now with cold. His right hand had reached out to feel for his brother and hung in the air for over a minute, aching. When Dean finally felt something solid beneath his hand, he said "Not a ghost."

"No, I'm not. I'm here," Sam said awkwardly.

He gave Sam a shove.

"I should be here," Sam said again, with more certainty.

"Yes, Sam, you should be."

Dean seized him and hugged him, his arms around a thin body, his face pushing against the ragged coat Sam wore. Sam nearly lost his footing in the intensity of the hug but Dean held him up and held him tight. Sam put his face down on Dean's head and was home.

Sam's hat fell to the ground and filled with snowflakes as they stood safe, alive, and together - all they'd ever wanted.

 

***

The town Dean had left that morning was just a few hours back, and they didn't speak nearly the whole way. Each held one of the horse's reins and walked a slow pace, side by side in the rapid arrival of evening. The horse shook its bridle occasionally, but they held firm.

There was a farm not far ahead, but it was dark now, and the snow fell heavily in the rising wind. The people there would not take well to two decrepit strangers at this hour, so Dean stopped them before they reached the main road and steered the horse, and Sam with it, toward an outbuilding near the property line.

"It's not the hay barn," Sam noted, as Dean opened the door. "It's blood. They kill here," Sam said, unsettled.

"There's no blood here, Sam." But soon enough he saw the tools, and the troughs, and the smell that lingered there reached his nose. "Slaughtering." His body slumped. "Perfect."

"I told you," Sam said.

"We'll stay tonight. They'll never see the fire in this storm."

***

Dean had tools to start a fire, but Sam had nothing to assist. He stood just inside the door, still holding the horse's bridle; the horse was unnerved by the smell of the room.

"Leave him out there, Sam."

"He'll die outside. He can stay here."

"Then put him over on the far side of the room."

Sam wrestled the horse to the far corner and left it tied to a ring on the wall. Dean's eyes were on him the whole time, even as he returned to Dean's side.

"I don't want fire," Sam said.

"We need warmth."

"You hate fire."

"I used to. I got over that," Dean replied.

"He _is_ fire," Sam said finally, his voice full of awe and fear.

"Sam. Sam, look at me. Where were you?"

"In Hell," Sam said as if mattered little.

"And then in Lawrence?" Dean asked. "How? And what then?"

"It's dark," Sam said, obviously exhausted and weak with hunger.

"Let me get the fire going," Dean said gently.

Dean took some dead leaves from the corner of the doorway, damp but serviceable, and some oil he kept on him from days long before when he'd learned from Sam how to send a stubborn ghost onward. It was a real effort with his one hand nearly frozen, but he made a small flame flicker from the leaves and before it could die, added more oil and kicked a plank loose from the gate of the pen. He couldn't snap it, so he left it whole and the flames spread in either direction along the board.

Sam looked at the flames in pain, and moved back as they grew.

"Stay, Sam. You need to get warm." Dean reached out and caught Sam by the arm, only the second time they'd touched. He kept Sam there, right by him, a few feet from the blazing board.

Later, he added another board doused with oil and the flames leaped higher. Smoke filled the roof peak and snuck out, a gray cloud unnoticeable in the storm. Cold air rushed in under the door and around gaps in the window plaster as the storm rose and fell outside. Still, they sat by the fire in silence.

Sam turned once to look at Dean, whose eyes were already on him, unwavering. The horse startled, tugging its chain, and Dean's eyes flicked over to it, then right back to Sam's, afraid he might have disappeared into the darkness.

Sam's face was thin and empty now. The man he'd fallen for and sought out three times in false and real Hells – that man was past now, and Sam was old and tired at twenty-five. The fire flickered across Sam's face as Dean watched him calm down, hypnotized by the flames. It was the same flickering orange light that lit their faces on Iron Avenue in Salina, his and Sam's and Molly's as the Impala Club burned in the fire that Azathunn brought.

"Let him come," Dean boasted, watching the flames for Azathunn's appearance.

"He will," Sam responded immediately, and Dean shivered. "He has a brother."

"Sam…"

Again they fell silent, and watched the flame. They knelt before it, the future of the world in their hands, so many people said, but they weren't ready yet. Sam slumped sideways and rested against Dean more heavily, shoulder to hip he could feel Dean by him. Dean pressed back to keep from falling under Sam's weight. There was still nothing to say, and so they sunk into sleep, half upright, legs cramped underneath them. Eventually the planks were consumed and the slaughterhouse went dark.

***

In the night, they awoke together. Dean stepped outside to piss and nearly froze solid. The sky was clear and starry. When he returned, Sam was sitting with his back against the trough, arms wrapped tight around his legs, shivering.

The air was stuffy but warm enough to keep them going till morning. The fire slumbered under the ashes. Dean stirred the fire, added another plank, and sat facing his brother.

"Sam, you look like hell, pardon the expression," Dean said when the glow from the new flames cast sharp lines across Sam's face.

"I can't remember your name," Sam confessed, his voice panicky.

"I'm Dean."

"Dean, of course," Sam said, but it was a word without connections.

"Do you remember anything before Lawrence?" Dean asked.

"You have a beard," Sam responded. "I don't like it. I liked your sideburns in…. In …" He fought for the name of the city and then gave it up. "You had sideburns. I liked those."

Dean lost control slowly, in the dark morning hours in a slaughtering barn in Indiana, far from the pain of his past, face to face with his once-dead brother. His eyes watered, tears filling until they spilled freely and he knelt between Sam's legs. His fingers fidgeted uselessly with the buttons on his coat, the one he found shoved into the seat box of the coach after Sikeston. He'd given it to Sam years ago, three years before their lives had gone from bad to crazy to a heap of ashes and a knife in the chest.

"Did you kill yourself?" Sam asked suddenly, and Dean was unable to answer. Sam watched and his mouth twisted in sorrow and confusion. "Dean, you didn't."

Dean rubbed his hand slowly up Sam's face and felt the wetness, the shaking sobs. He ran his fingers slowly back and forth, trying to cut off the tears, block them from getting through. Each new tear he slashed aside, but they kept coming. Each touch brought more memories back for Sam, and now they stayed.

Dean rolled up onto his knees and pulled off the coat. The thin shirt below it was filthy, and the sleeves had lost their buttons weeks back. He pulled the sleeve up as far as it would go and Sam saw the scars of their first battle with Azathunn, before the demon had a name, before he'd taken their peace.

Sam moved his fingers down along Dean's arm and touched the scars to see if they still burned. He looked at Dean again, lit by the small flames and by the moonlight from the window, tears running down both cheeks.

"I don't want you sad. Or dead," Sam said.

"Sammy, I –"

Sam was unbuttoning Dean's shirt, smelling Dean even more strongly now, and as the shirt gaped open, he saw the tiny red scar where the knife had entered. He leaned forward and pressed his face against it, feeling Dean shake with the residual sobs and the confused lust that was taking over his mind in the middle of the night.

Dean wrapped his arms around Sam and pulled him tight as he sat back on his heels. Sam leaned forward and burrowed tighter as he fell, curling up between Dean's legs, his face against Dean's chest. The room was growing colder, but they didn't notice.

***

They woke again to a loud rapping on the door and the horse tugging violently against its bindings. It was broad daylight now; Dean opened his eyes and shut them again quickly against the pain of the light. The room stank of smoke and horse piss and the two of them, stuck tight to each other. Sam tried to wake up, but he was lost in Dean, his mind trying to remember.

"It's the farmer," Dean whispered.

He lifted Sam off him and fastened the top buttons of his shirt. Sam pulled his hat hard down on his head, but it did little to make him look respectable, sitting there on the floor.

"Get up, Sam," Dean said, pulling him to his feet.

Dean opened the door to a familiar dark-eyed man whom Sam had never seen before, a man with an odd birthmark across his face. Dean swore loudly.

"You found each other. Wonderful," Tez said coldly. "But you need to die – now."

 


	10. We All Have Scars

_March 21, 1875 – Salt Creek Township, Indiana_

The man at the door wasn't anyone Sam knew, but he saw a brother standing there – the need in the stranger's dark eyes was like Dean's need for him, but so much stronger. Sam reached out his hand and laid it across the birthmark on the man's face as if to erase it, even as Tez flinched back. What Sam saw next made him wince - an act of such boundless love and unending pain – and in the vision his own hands stretched out in front of him, covered in the blood of his crime.

Dean, who had kept hold of Sam's left hand as they opened the door, saw the same images, but he was the one who lay dying in the mud. Over him Azathunn, the brother-killer, was crying. His hands, stained with the red soil and the blood of both men, touched Dean so tenderly, so slowly, as if he would break apart.

When Sam felt the fading warmth of the body under him and heard silence fall beneath the skin, he wiped his brother's face as clean as he could, trailing a red line behind, left to the temple and right to the temple, a final gesture before he wiped his own eyes and raged at Heaven.

Sam wiped Tez's face without realizing what he was doing, and then stood there in the doorway in the noonday sun, tears in his eyes. Tez, for once, was speechless, but Dean was not.

"What the hell was that?" Dean asked. "I was dying! Again!"

Tez didn't answer – he seemed unable to move from under Sam's hand, unable to stop staring at Sam, who was crying openly now.

"That was both of them, the day they made their promise," Sam said, his voice twisted in grief.

"So not you killing me?" Dean clarified, looking at Sam's agony.

"It's all the same," Sam added, his bony shoulders sagging.

Dean lifted Sam's hand away from Tez carefully, breaking contact between them and pulling Sam closer to him.

"You told me you didn't keep that promise," Dean said, looking at Tez, who was waking from a nightmare.

"We didn't. We tried, but we could not do what God asked. We could not stem the fear that flooded into Creation with us." Tez's voice was nervous, guilty.

"God doesn't make mistakes," Dean said, going for what he was sure was true.

"No, Dean," Sam interrupted, now free of the vision. "But there are fears, and God can't fix them. He asks the flaws to fix themselves. It can take forever. That's what we keep doing, time after time."

"That mark on your face - Molly said I had it when I returned from wherever you sent me," Dean said, still waiting for a response from Tez.

"The mark of Cain," Tez answered finally.

"But you're not Cain-"

"We are all marked," said Tez, his voice weaker now.

"We're not them literally, Dean," Sam added. "But Azathunn, Lucifer, me…."

Dean turned to look at Sam again, still holding both of his hands.

"You're on the same team as _Lucifer_?" Dean asked. "And you killed me?" The gentle comfort of the night before was crumbling around him.

"I don't remember," Sam said softly.

"I won't let you kill me," Dean said to him, not moving an inch from his brother. "And I won't let _you_ kill either of us," he said to Tez.

Tez stared at both of them in wonder; he'd never expected Dean to step out of the path laid out for him years earlier. He was ready to kill them both when he arrived, to send them on to the next life, a clean start. Now he watched and waited.

"We won't have much time," Sam said. "Azathunn won't stay in Hell."

"Azathunn won't venture into this world now that he knows I'm waiting for him, but Azazel will," Tez agreed. "A demon with Azathunn's fire in him could do a lot of damage, and the angels won't step in."

"Give us time," Dean asked Tez. "Before we have to fight again. Whatever it is you do – the time thing."

"Dean, that was a year out of this world. When you return, it may be too late."

"Give us what you can."

"You need to be gone from this world, once and for all. It will be bad enough when you return."

"Tez, you can kill us later," Dean said impulsively. "Give me time with my brother now."

Tez closed his eyes and thought, and then put out both hands, waiting. Dean took hold of one, and Sam finally took the other, but Tez made no other movement. Sam and Dean kept their eyes on each other. In a moment, the world spun fiercely around them but appeared exactly as before when their heads cleared.

"Where is he?" Sam asked, looking around for Tez.

"Don't worry, he did this to me twice," Dean said, looking around the tiny outbuilding. "We're in, um, wherever he sends people."

"It looks the same," Sam replied. "Same horse over there, taking a crap."

"Come on, we'll find a better place to stay."

***

The snow was still all around as they started out, a late heavy snow that melted quickly in the warmth of March winds. It rained later that same day and when they reached the inn where Dean had stayed the night before, they were soaked.

The innkeeper's sour face and even sourer "Mr. Hickok" made it clear he remembered Dean.

" _Bill_ Hickok?" Sam whispered, his face a mixture of embarrassment and joy at his brother's inventiveness.

Dean gave him a sidelong glance. "And my brother Lorenzo. We'll need a room."

_There it is. That's the face I wanted to see, Sammy. God I love that I can still do that to you._

***

All evening the rain fell, a steady hammering on the roof that kept them trapped inside the cabin.

They'd eaten most of what Dean had been able to steal from the larder at the main house, a solid day's worth of food but likely their last for a while, as Dean's money had run out. Sam sat at the small table across from Dean, his legs interlocked with his brother's.

"Can you get some more of that pie?" Sam asked.

"I'm not going out again in this downpour. We'll be lucky if we don't get flooded out. What kind of world is this, Tez, where it rains all the time?" Dean asked the ceiling.

"I just haven't eaten anything in… a year and a half," Sam said. "Everything tastes so … alive."

***

Dean found candles in the dusty desk, handfuls of stubs barely good for an hour each, and one candle lit up only a few feet of the cabin as the wet skies darkened in the afternoon. After dinner, the room was pitch black but for the small circle of light they sat in.

"It's so quiet," Sam said.

"It's pouring outside," Dean countered.

"I don't hear them screaming any more," Sam said quietly and sat back. Dean had no response to that except to stare at the candle and straighten his shoulders slowly. "Better get some sleep, Dean. We can make plans tomorrow," he added after a few minutes of watching Dean watch the candle flame.

Sam stood up and took off his damp coat. His shirt was simple white cotton from two years earlier, worn and dirty but seemingly untouched by the fire that had consumed him entirely. Dean's gaze shifted from the candle to his brother. Sam unbuttoned the shirt and slipped it off, exposing a broad back now weaker, and ribs that showed clearly through the skin. Dean stared, unable to speak.

Sam's boots went next, the left one then the right one as he balanced shakily on one leg. He was sweating from the effort, and leaned on the bedpost. He was so far from the candle, but Dean could see every detail. The layer of oil and sweat made Sam shine. Sam undid his belt carefully, an act he'd ignored for the centuries he'd been in Hell; the buckle stymied him for a long while, then slipped free.

When his pants fell to the floor, rather than pick them up, he stepped out of them carefully. Dean watched the long thin legs flex, and recalled a younger, more powerful Sam who had knelt over him, letting Dean run his hands along the muscles as he watched. Sam cursed softly.

"Don't worry about 'em, Sam. I'll pick them up."

"No, it's not that."

Sam half turned, the fabric of his underwear clearly raised. Dean's mouth opened just a little and he exhaled softly as his eyes followed the arc.

"Sorry," Sam said.

"No, Sam. Don't apologize."

In the tiny cabin, their proximity forced an odd dance.

Dean stood up and went to Sam but he stopped when he was close enough to see the scar on Sam's chest. It was nearly invisible in the dim candlelight, but now he saw the wrinkled flesh. Sam looked down at it for the first time as well.

"That's where he-"

Dean didn't ask if he could touch it. He wanted it gone, he wanted the pain gone and the last 18 months gone and all the rest of the world and the monsters in it to just leave him and Sam alone. His fingers traced the puckered skin below Sam's heart where Azathunn had taken his brother's soul.

"-he stole you," Dean said, his voice so low Sam could barely hear him.

"I was glad it wasn't you, Dean."

"What?" Dean said in disbelief. Sam's fingers moved back and forth over the ends of the scar where it reached above Dean's collar, just like the scars on his own arms, but deeper.

"It's just like the one on your back," Sam said softly, putting his arm around his brother and running his hand along the slashing scar that Dean had gotten in almost the same way twenty years before.

Dean could smell Sam now, not the musty air of the cabin or the wet wool of his own coat, but Sam. Beneath the fresh sweat of effort and the stale sweat of fear, was Sam. His Sam, so long gone.

"Dean, I'm kinda feeling like the only naked one in the cabin."

"Right!" Dean said, ditching his pants in a heap and fumbling at the buttons of his vest and shirt. "You're not alone now," he said a moment later, stripped to his drawers with remarkable speed.

They were still a foot apart, a foot from the bed, and not sure what to do next.

"It's cold," Dean complained, and Sam agreed, although he was oddly warm inside.

"Bed, then."

"Bed."

***

They lay there, propped up on elbows mirroring each other, the blanket covering what they weren't ready to face. Sam was black in shadow, and Dean was lit by the barest trace of the low candle flame, his eyes flashing with the yellow light. Dean no longer smelled of bath salts as he had almost every day of his adult life, Sam realized. And then Sam saw it again.

His eyes flicked over the many tiny cuts that marked Dean's chest and locked on the small vertical scar below Dean's nipple. He bit his lip and stared.

"You really did it," Sam said finally.

"Did what?"

Sam ran his fingers along the sides of the scar, afraid it would open again. "Why, Dean?"

"I had to get you out of Hell. That was always our plan."

"By dying?"

"The only choice left."

"That's never the only choice," Sam chided. Sam's hand stayed there, warm against Dean's chest. He could feel Dean's heart racing, like his own.

"The knife killed Simon," Dean said softly, his eyes wide and afraid in the near dark. "I killed Simon," he said. "Molly's husband." Sam heard the pain in his voice and leaned in slowly, until his forehead just brushed against Dean's. He felt the nervous breath on his chin, and yet Dean's heart slowed, as it always had when Sam touched him, awake or asleep. It was a steady beat now.

"You will have to make that right."

"How, Sam? I can't even face Molly. I can't go back to Memphis."

Sam tilted his head down slowly, feeling his nose slide softly against Dean's. Dean's eyes were wide and terrified, pools of black in reddened lids, just inches away. His guilt was huge, choking the air out of his lungs.

"We'll find a way to make the world right," Sam whispered.

Dean moved his head up and brought his lips to rest against Sam's, their breath mingling for the time it took them to overcome the pain and the fear of two years and two decades before that, alone in life. Rain dripped steadily off the eaves, shutting out the world on every side. When Sam's infinite forgiveness finally stilled Dean's thoughts, the kiss was a blessing that sealed their promise, and a fuse that set off a violent night.

Their movements were savage, bodies battering each other in rage and lust and sorrow and fearful longing, searching for love among bloodied kisses and Sam's hand prints on Dean's neck as he rode him harder than he'd ever been fucked. Dean yelled too, a cry of pain when he came: victory, and disbelief that he had the one person around him that he'd needed all his life.

***

They slept and woke in utter blackness. It rained harder, then softer, then harder again; they took that rhythm and began again. Dean found his way over the illumined body below him, every inch familiar and visible, shining in his mind. He worked down from a kiss to the hollow behind Sam's ear, dragging his cock up and down Sam's stomach, catching in the sticky load he'd left there.

Sam had his hands on Dean's back, then his shoulders as he moved lower, and finally in Dean's hair, pulling him against his nipple as Dean slid his teeth back and forth and licked it over and over again. He held Dean there, despite Dean's clear intent to go lower, because he didn't want to lose contact. When Dean moaned, Sam let go, and Dean licked down through his hair and swirled his tongue around the head of Sam's cock.

He worked there for what seemed like hours of joy to Sam, who thrust harder, then gently as Dean let his hands run free over Sam's thin frame, so warm now as if he still had fire in him. Sam saw it all clear as day, Dean's jaw working, the lips wrapped around his shaft, the eyes looking back at him with unhindered lust, a drunken leer he fed. He found Dean's ass and worked his hand slowly back and forth from Dean's large balls to the small hole that stretched to take him, every time.

Sam curled up on one arm and draped his other over Dean's back, framing his ass and pulling Dean closer to him. He found his way in over the smooth cheek and ran the tip of his nose down the crack, then trailed his fingers down the same path. Dean sucked vigorously, but managed to grunt out a clear response to Sam's request. He swung his leg wildly up over Sam, nearly clipping him, and settled across his face, feeling Sam's eager tongue in him in seconds.

When Sam came, Dean was so focused on the face buried in his ass that it caught him by surprise. Sam didn't slow down, and Dean let the cum run from his lips as he rested his head at the base of Sam's cock. He let Sam work his cock and his ass until he came all over the mattress, back arched, hearing Sam's familiar chuckle.

It might have been an hour, or more, or less, but Dean woke again to Sam whispering in his ear that he would remember this, and then fucking him in needy, desperate strokes. Dean felt him biting into the back of his neck, grunting and slamming his hips harder and harder against Dean's ass while his hand worked Dean's cock until he came again in a heavy squirt. Sam slid out, already coming, and stroked himself only twice. Dean felt the warm spray on his back, in a long stream, and on his ass, running down onto the sheets.

Words, and declarations of love that lacked words filled in the empty space between them until there was no emptiness. They slept longer the third time, but woke pressed tight together. Dean's right arm was tight around Sam's chest. His fingertips rested on the scar tissue and the nightmares of the past two years came back to both of them. Dean climbed on top of Sam and kissed the spot, banishing it as best he could.

Sam pulled him up to kiss him again, rude, tongue-filled kisses that Dean got lost in. The rain pounded against the windowpanes harder than ever, inundating them.

"Creek's gonna flood," Sam whispered into Dean's mouth.

"I got the cabin on high ground," Dean whispered back. "We're safe."

"What about the rest of them?"

"We'll save'em later," Dean replied, kissing Sam's next words into silence.

Dean got off again, as if the smell of his brother were all the drug he required. He let Sam do whatever he wanted that night, because they both wanted it. When Dean spoke, Sam resonated, as he always had. The deep voice stirred something in his belly that reached from his brain to behind his balls, and it hummed to Dean's words. Dean made love to the man who he'd die for again, and if that was his brother, so be it.

Sam, under Dean's eager mouth, wanted no one else there, ever.   _Not ever. Just Dean._

***

They held each other for another hour, until Sam pushed away and Dean pulled him back.

"I need to pee, Dean."

"Oh, sorry."

Sam nearly overturned the table in the dark, looking for the pot to piss in, and Dean heard him grab the satchel off the floor.

"Do you have something I can use?"

"No, Sam, not my satchel!"

"Not the satchel, Dean. I need a bottle or something. Tell me you don't have a nearly-empty bottle of whiskey in here."

"It's a new bottle, and you are _not_ dumping it out so you can piss in it. Go outside."

"It's pouring!" argued Sam, rummaging until he felt a jar wrapped inside a shirt. "Oh, thank God. I hope this is big enough."

"What? What- what did you find?" Dean asked, leaping from the bed in a panic and colliding with Sam in the dark. "What are you pissing in?"

"Just some jar. Back off, Dean. I don't need your hands all over me when I'm peeing. Ahhh… Oh, jeez, what's in this jar?"

"Give me that!" Dean shouted, fumbling in the dark, arms entangling with Sam's.

"Dammit, Dean, I'm gonna pee on the rug, give me back the jar!" Sam wrenched it from Dean and started peeing again, hearing the jar fill quickly. "Shit, what IS this, it's nearly full already!" He leaped to the front door and dashed outside to pee off the porch, getting soaking wet in the process.

When he returned, shivering wet and angry, Dean was sitting at the table where he'd lit their last candle. He was silent. The jar of what looked like mud was on the table as well.

"What was it, summoning herbs?"

"No," Dean said, sounding annoyed.

"Well can I toss it out, or did you need to inspect it or something?"

"That was you."

"What?"

Dean started to smile, the first Sam had seen in a very long while.

"I don't know what we did or how, but either you're brand new or you're a quart short," Dean said.

"Dean, it's … 4 am or something. What was that I peed in?"

"You peed all over yourself, Sam," Dean said, his head shaking side to side in disbelief. "I got those ashes at the crossroad in Sikeston last year."

Sam's eyes shot to the jar, which bubbled oddly, and he jumped back.

"My- What in hell, Dean?"

"I buried some of them last summer. We had a funeral."

"And then you grave-robbed me?"

"I… I just didn't bury all of it," Dean confessed.

Sam's look of horror was turning to pity, but the jar bugged him.

 _My own death, topped off with my own-_ "Can I toss it now?" he begged.

Dean looked him over from head to toe, wet and shivering like a lost dog.

"I'll get rid of it," he said, capping the jar and heading for the door, where he flung it as hard as he could into the rain-filled night.

Sam could barely make Dean out, a lithe naked man dancing from one foot to the other in the doorway as the candle burned down and shrank and the deep darkness of the rainy night returned.

"Light another candle, Sam," said Dean, coming back into the cabin.

"We've used up all the stubs, and in case you hadn't noticed, Dean, we're both soaking wet."

"I'm not going to ask the innkeeper for anything at this hour. We're naked and we stink of sex. God I love that smell. I've got nothing else to do but drag you back into that bed, Sam. Towel off with the top blanket and join me between the sheets. Six months of this," Dean said, grinning, pulling Sam toward the bed.

"I'll starve," Sam chuckled, pushing Dean away.

"Still…" Dean argued convincingly.

"How about we eat regularly and have six years of this?"

"Yeah," Dean agreed uneasily, "six or sixty, either way." He padded naked toward the small bed ahead of them. Sam watched his ass as he went, and as he leaned over to lift the covers. He wanted it all again, a night that lasted, time together out of the world.

They wiped themselves dry with the thin bedcover and Sam allowed himself to be drawn under the thin comforter next to Dean, where they warmed again, entwined, and slept deeply.

The rain slid down the windows in small waves, each like the one above it in the same rippling curve. It was still too early to be light, but it was brighter than before.

***

They dozed back to back, recharging, and woke to a hot midday. The room was a mix of sweat and sex and dusty heat, the sheets stained in so many places it was almost a pattern. Dean's hair stood up ridiculously, and Sam would have laughed, but he was more concerned about the stifling air.

Sunlight shone in the single window, forming a hot pool of light on the boards, almost straight down.

"Can't be noon," Sam said.

"Well, we didn't sleep much last night," Dean said, nuzzling against Sam's arm.

He liked it like this: calm and soundless and wrapped in warmth.

 _It's just like-_ "Summer!" he said, sitting up. "Go look outside."

"No, Dean."

"Not _go_ outside, just look. Tell me what you see."

Sam hopped the few steps to the nearest window and pulled the curtain back.

"Summer," he agreed, not believing the lush green that met his eyes. "What just happened?"

"He gave us time."

"He took six months from us, you mean?"

"Well, it was a long night of lovemaking, Sammy. Even for me-"

There was a knock at the door.

"Well?" Dean said impatiently, pulling the blanket over himself.

"Well what?" Sam whispered.

"Get your pants on and answer it."

"Why?"

"Younger brother," he whispered loudly, as if it were the most obvious fact.

Sam got himself half dressed as the knocking resumed.

"COMING!" Dean yelled, the blanket at his chin.

Sam glared at him. When he opened the door, it wasn't Tez, as they feared, but the sour innkeeper.

"Telegram. From Memphis, God help them. It's for a Mr. and Mr. Winchester, and the note says that you may be here under a false name. I figured you weren't Wild Bill himself."

"Th-thanks," Sam said, snatching the telegram and closing the door quickly. "It's from Molly," he said, unfolding it. And it's dated June 21st." He handed it to Dean.

"Three months exactly," Sam said, wondering what had happened around them as they lay there.

Dean read the telegram and caught the code at the end, a code he'd used with Molly in case of trouble at the brothel. It revealed a very different message: YELLOW JACK HERE. CANNOT LEAVE QUARANTINE. DO NOT COME FOR ANY REASON.

 


	11. Convergence

_June 24, 1875 – Outside Louisville, Kentucky_

The stories that reached Louisville were amplified and distorted into tales of horror that couldn't be true, Dean thought – two thousand dead in Memphis already, twice that number sick, and close to half the city fleeing, or trying to.

"They die in the houses, one by one, and the fires don't stop it. The air reeks of brimstone and death," one man whispered to them at a dim corner table in the Boone Tavern, afraid to speak until they'd coaxed him with bourbon and cash.

Sam had opposed both – the bourbon on grounds of accuracy and the cash for practical reasons; they'd passed two forged bonds already and needed to get out of town quickly with the money they still had. The man was gone soon enough, cash in his pocket and plans to head somewhere north or east.

"Sounds like demons," said Sam, drinking his beer.

"It does. Although there've been outbreaks almost every year," Dean said. Dean watched Sam carefully, as he had every minute since they found each other again.

Sam had recovered remarkably, in mood and in body, in just the time since March, whether he counted it in months or in days. Every now and then Sam seemed to stop and grasp for a name or a place, but Dean told him stories of their time together, as much as he could recall. He seemed more like his old self with every night together and every new day, but he was hiding something.

"So, Sam, I was thinking…"

"I'm listening," Sam said, watching a plate of food go by.

"So we have to fix things. How do we fix anything in this world if the big guys won't talk?"

Sam shook his head uncertainly and shrugged.

"Why not get Az and Tez to take each other out?" Dean explained.

"They won't fight."

"Sure they will. The angels and demons want a war, so let's give it to them."

"Force their hand?" Sam asked, his voice now far less certain.

"They've got a three-month head start."

"And how do we not destroy everything else?" Sam asked. "A war between demi-gods, between Heaven and Hell – that sounds like the Apocalypse."

***

Malachi found them first, halfway across Kentucky on a newly paved road to Memphis. The carriage they'd 'borrowed' from outside the tavern gave them no protection from the elements nor any privacy, Dean realized with regret. Malachi, Dean reasoned, could have found them anyway, but Sam seemed upset.

Malachi looked at them, especially Sam, for an uncomfortably long time.

"What, Malachi?" Sam asked finally, exasperated.

"I've never seen a soul consumed by Satan walk the Earth again."

"I was in Hell too," Dean complained, trying to shield Sam.

"You're both fools," Malachi said with a half smile. "To believe that God rests his greatest plans on the backs of fools…. It's not easy."

"We're going to Memphis," Sam explained, hoping to cut the meeting short.

"Foolish again. You won't get in. They've quarantined the city," Malachi said. "Refugees are being turned back, or shot. If you _could_ get in, you'd never leave. And even you two aren't immune to disease."

"Then you take us in," Dean said matter-of-factly.

"I cannot!" Malachi burst out, looking uneasy. "I am far beyond a crisis of faith. Heaven's mercy is no longer with me – only Tez protects me now. My new beliefs are not the approved dogma of the Garrison."

"You have a new religion?" Sam asked.

"I have faith in fools," Malachi said, the same half smile returning. "God has put his faith in you two and that is not for me to judge. He no longer speaks to us because he lives in you."

"We're… not your God," said Dean, more uncomfortable with expressions of faith than ever, especially faith in him.

"I only know that I have found God again. I'll die for this heresy, but it has set me free."

"Dean, he means all of us, humans," Sam interrupted. "That book he hid away – the Shattered God?" Sam said, thinking ahead of Dean.

"The human soul is more precious than you can imagine. But the Garrison has put all their faith in the belief that humans, the new favorite children, have stolen God away from us. In the name of serving him, they will bring a war upon you that will wipe you all out. Lucifer was at least honest about it; Michael will kill you just as certainly as Lucifer will – but he'll say it's to preserve you from falling into Lucifer's hands."

"Yeah, about that war…" Sam began.

"Just send us to Memphis. You don't have to come with us," Dean said, nudging Sam in the ribs.

"And while I am ever in service to your souls, I am not your pack mule, Dean. I can't help you. They'd know," he whispered, looking up. "Even appearing here is a risk. As long as you creep along the face of the Earth like the ants they think you are, you won't be spotted. And stay clear of churches."

"Too many angel spies?" Dean asked.

"Too many demons. They're turning the virtuous faster than we can save them. Azazel has stirred up this pestilence from the South, and the streets are full of reapers."

"Great," muttered Dean.

"If you're determined to get to Memphis, and I'm sure you are, because it's the worst course to take, then do it quickly," Malachi said. "There's one thing demons cannot do."

"What's that?" Dean asked.

"They can't _wait._ They're learning to, slowly, but they think a century is too long. Everything passes so slowly for them. They think a long con is something that lasts a week." He gave them a long last look and was gone from the road.

"What are reapers?" Sam whispered.

"Something I never want to meet again. I don't think they like me."

Sam looked at him strangely, wondering what Dean had not yet told him about his year alone.

***

_June 28, 1875 – At the Kentucky/Tennessee border_

The vibrant gold of a late summer evening filled the sky as the carriage rumbled across small stones in the road. The long, warm days and the lack of normalcy had brought a stronger fear with them, and trials they hadn't foreseen. With each mile they came closer to Memphis, they saw fewer people and more abandoned homes. No one traveled with them, and no one came up the roads from the city.

They no longer needed to travel back roads by night but were not used to the midsummer heat wave. They could find little to eat or drink in the deserted country. Thirst burned through them that warm evening, and fatigue loosened Sam's grip on the reins, letting the horses run dangerously close to the edge of the road. Hunger tore at Dean where he lay propped awkwardly in the carriage, the only way he'd slept for two days now since their food ran out.

Low-hanging, untrimmed trees swept their branches against the top of the carriage. Sam had slumped so far forward in his exhaustion that the first branches missed him and he woke to Dean's sleepy complaints and got a whack on the face for it, followed by the sound of many things dropping onto the carriage – soft, quiet thuds. Dean complained loudly now. The next few branches were even lower, and Sam was dragged through them. Small round fruits burst against his face and fell wet in his lap as he tried to steer away from the trees.

"Sam! Wake up!" Dean yelled from the seat behind him.

"I'm awake! I'm awake. This is amazing!" He sounded suspiciously happy, and that worried Dean.

There was a strong odor of overripe fruit as Dean climbed down onto the quiet overgrown road, and crickets chirping and the stirring of the horses, as hungry as he was, snuffling fruit from the ground.

"Where the hell are we?" Dean asked, sweat soaking his collar in the warm evening.

"Western Tennessee somewhere, who cares?" Sam replied, unconcerned. "We have food!"

Sam swung himself down from the driver's bench with one hand, stumbling a bit as he hit the ground, and Dean caught him. His other hand was brimming over with small black lumps that Dean feared might just as easily have come from beneath the horses.

"They're perfect!" Sam said excitedly, dropping several into Dean's hand.

"You're kidding," was all Dean could say.

They were the source of the fruity odor, rich and ripe, mixed with a distinct mustiness.

_Not from the horses. Good._

"Not as tempting as paw-paws, but if it's a choice between life or death…" Sam went on.

"We're not going to die here, Sam."

"We haven't eaten in two days, not for real. We gave what was left to the horses and still there's not a town in sight, not even a farmhouse.

"So what are these?" Dean asked.

" _Prunus serotina_ ," Sam replied, giving Dean nothing to work with. "Just try one. And watch out for the pits."

Dean watched Sam swallow his and the hunger inside him ached for something real. His legs were quivering slightly and he was growing weaker by the hour. He bit in, feeling the warm mush ooze through his mouth.

"Tastes like a cherry pie made with mud," Dean said around the clot of softened pulp on his tongue. "With rocks in it."

"They're just right," said Sam, undeterred and on his third mouthful. "Dying but not dead."

"They're rotted?" Dean spat, relieving himself only partially of the thing that had spread across his tongue.

"No, just … aged. It's how they're supposed to be. Take some more. And keep them down." He slurped on a few more. "Full of sugar and water. They'll keep us going."

Dean found himself unconvinced by the cherries but charmed by this man who knew the fruits of the land and how to survive. _We have to make it through_ , he thought to himself, watching Sam devour two handfuls more.

Sam's tongue searched through the sour paste that took him back to his childhood, a single memory resurrected by taste and smell, the only trace of John left in his mind, as they sat hungry by a campfire. It shook him back to reality, and to his brother trying to be the stronger one for him.

"Come on, Dean, eat up. You need your strength."

"So we can risk our lives again?"

"So we can survive this fight. No more dying."

Dean's stomach gurgled, changing the subject for him. He popped in another cherry and swallowed the flesh quickly, spitting the stone on the road. After fifteen or so, he felt a bit less light-headed, and joined Sam in building a fire. Dean put his portion of fruit near the flames, in the hope that warm cherries might be more like warm pie than mud.

***

The heat of the day faded quickly after sunset; the unexpected chill pushed them closer to the fire and closer together.

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"You're not afraid of fire any more?" Sam asked.

"Nope. If our fire demon shows up, I'll grab the bastard by his skinny neck and punch him till he looks like this amulet."

"Dean Winchester gets through adversity by punching it in the face!" Sam laughed.

They passed the warmed fruits to each other, not talking for a long while. Sam watched Dean continue to eat with effort; hunger and disgust battled it out, hunger winning as always. Sam was already pressed against Dean's side on the grassy slope above the road, but he found a way to push closer. Dean reached around him, an easy gesture in the new bond they'd found, and pulled him tight.

"I don't care, Dean," Sam said finally.

"Neither do I. Never did, really. Brother or not, I never did care that much how people talk. You know how I feel. But this fruit idea of yours. Not ever again, Sam. Seriously."

He paused, then ate another one; Sam could feel the shiver run through him. Dean kicked the rest of the fruit into the fire, where it popped and oozed and shriveled away.

"But after this…" Sam asked.

"After this, after we get through, yes. You and me, brothers and whatever else, it's just us. No one else. No angels, no demons, no more dying."

Dean was as terse and spontaneous as he always was, but he meant every word. To Sam's ears, it was a clear change; a firm yes to love, no matter what.

"Tell me what I missed," Sam asked quietly.

Dean gave him, in five minutes, the death and hell and loss of a year that seemed like many years, and Sam listened, his eyes on Dean's face. His head lolled up to the stars emerging overhead when Dean finished, and then onto Dean's chest as they lay back in the grass. He fell asleep there in the whirring of summer insects and the silence that fell when Dean's story finally ended at the empty rack where their father had lain.

Dean lay awake for a half hour or more, his cherry-stained fingers sliding gently over Sam's face, brushing mosquitos and stray hairs from his forehead, leaving an odd line of faintest purple.

***

_June 30, 1875 - Quarantine Blockade, Humboldt, TN_

At the roadblock, Dean halted the carriage before a group of men with rifles, shotguns, and farm tools, disorganized locals rather than the Pinkerton security who guarded the train lines. Every road was a way for Yellow Jack to get out of Memphis and spread across the country, and so the citizens put their fears to rest by guarding the roads against the walking dead.

"You can't pass this point," said a grizzled old man with a shaky arm. "Quar-an-tine," he drawled.

"We can't go _in_?" Dean asked calmly.

"Now who in their right mind wants to go in?" argued the man, gesturing with his rifle. "You'll end up dead of the fever just like the folks who raced through here last week, hell-bent for Memphis."

"I thought you were trying to keep people from coming out," Dean continued, just as calmly.

"Well, we don't want you in there – you'll just try to come back," said the man, lost in his illogic. "You won't make it past Yellow Jack, and if you try to come back out, we'll kill you."

"No of 'em come back out, not one," said a dark-haired young man of about seventeen standing off to the side trying to look brave with a small weapon.

"Look, my friend Romeo here has a sweetheart down in Memphis, and he's terribly worried about her; not a word from her in weeks." He gestured broadly at a grimacing Sam, hoping to win sympathy from the rifleman.

"Yes…" Sam said, still angry that he hadn't thought of new names fast enough and was stuck with Dean's old favorites. "Yes, I need to find her," he sobbed dramatically.

"Probably dead already, she is," said the gap-toothed man on the Sam's side of the carriage with a shotgun aimed at him.

Dean was preparing to embellish the tragic love story in a way that would have them all in tears and waving them onward, but he was interrupted by a coach racing up the Memphis road toward them. It stopped abruptly a few hundred feet away when the driver saw the men blocking his way and reined in his horses.

From down the road came the plea, one the men had heard before: "We're clean. No Yellow Jack, no fever. We just need to get to Paducah."

"How many of you?" called the lead man, his rifle aimed at the new threat.

"Three, a mother and daughter. And me," the driver added.

"We'll approach. Don't move." In a low voice he told the two with shotguns, "Follow me. Shoot the driver first."

"If he moves?" asked the young man, who now looked very nervous.

"No, just shoot him. They ain't gettin' past. And we ain't gettin' close enough to touch 'em and see if they're lyin' or not."

" _Remy_ ," Sam said quietly.

"Way ahead of you, Romeo," Dean whispered.

"As a trained marksman, I can show you how to aim that rifle better," Dean said to the lead man, hopping down. "You don't have to take a single step closer  - to the infected," he said ominously, and it worked.

The man eyed him cautiously and said, "Show me your marksmanship, boy."

Dean stepped off the cart and made a great show of placing his hands on the man's rifle and aiming it. "Line up the sight down here with that pine tree down there – see it?" he asked.

Sam offered to demonstrate a similar technique for the man with the shotgun. The youngest man had not even raised his weapon yet, and appeared unwilling to. Once Sam was in place, Dean smiled his broadest smile and spun the rifle around, bringing the stock up against the man's temple with a resounding crack. Sam slammed his elbow into the man's face and caught the shotgun, training it on the kid, who dropped his.

"You don't kill people, okay?" Sam said, "It's wrong."

"Sam, questionable moral lessons later. Move us down the road now."

"I can't let them out," said the young man.

"Then do your best to hold them here," said Dean.

"I could die."

"Without killing anyone," Dean said, then turned to Sam. "Not going to lose every time, Sam. We can't."

Sam was silent and troubled for the next half mile and it irked Dean.

"Talk, Sam. What?"

"We can't get out of this... this war for what's right. That family in the coach – do they die or live? There's no way to win," Sam said softly.

"There's always another choice, Sam, just like you said."

A moment later, a distant rifle shot echoed in the heavy air, so quiet they might have missed it but for the silence that had fallen between them.

They headed further south toward Memphis until nightfall and pulled off behind a row of trees to sleep, just in case there was a living soul on the road.

***

_June 30, 1875 – Sixty miles outside Memphis, Tennessee_

The next morning, they were no longer alone. At the crossroads just a hundred feet away stood two nuns consulting a map of some kind, while the younger one shielded them from the sun with a fringed parasol. They appeared to have come from the west, and had stopped on that side of the intersection.

"And I thought _we_ were hot," Dean whispered, pulling back from thick line of shrubs and trees behind which they'd parked. It was nearly 9 a.m. and the sun was already high and fiery.

The horses had nibbled all the grass in a half circle around them, and were jostling to move further. Sam ignored them, and Dean, and kept watching. He was puzzled to see two sisters on such a dangerous road, and even more surprised when one of them pointed south along the route that would take them into Memphis – the route Sam and Dean were taking.

Sam continued to watch, waving Dean back when the sisters' attention shifted to the eastern road. From that way came two men, familiar to Sam from their dress and their accents. They walked with eyes alert to any movement and their hands resting near their guns, the way Sam knew from experience, the way Dean had learned to under Kearney's tutelage.

"Hunters," Dean said.

"Hunters from the hills," Sam corrected him. "Do you hear the accent?"

"Your hills. Like your cousins out at the Auxiers' place."

Sam watched as the two men drew closer to the nuns. The sisters were unwavering, neither trusting nor fearful, but solid as rock.

"Ladies," the stockier man greeted them.

"And a good day to you, gentlemen. What brings you this way?"

"We, um, we're just out hunting," the thinner man replied.

"In the quarantined area?"

"We heard rumors there was a lot to catch out here."

"There aren't even birds," said the younger woman, mustering up the kind of courage she felt radiating off her older companion.

"And you won't kill much with popguns and little knives like those," noted the older nun to the hunters' surprise.

"My name's Frank, this is Jesse. We're really just looking for a relative of ours. Don't suppose you've encountered him on your journey?" the stockier one, Frank, asked politely.

"Those are the worst hunter names I've ever heard. Why not use Bat and Wyatt, or-" Dean complained.

"Shhh."

"Samuel Winchester is his name," Frank continued.

"I can't say as I recollect that name," the older nun continued, "but if he's in these parts, he'd do well to head to Memphis, plague or not. That's where the food and shelter are to be found. We're heading to St. Mary's Cathedral church, in the very mouth of Hell, to help the souls who can still be helped."

"If you need accompanying, we'd be happy to head south for a while," said Jesse.

***

After some further agreement was reached – which Sam had trouble hearing because Dean was whispering so loud and angrily in his ear about their awful luck and Sam's surfeit of cousins and the "mouth of Hell" comment – the odd foursome set off from the crossroads southwest toward the city.

Dean complained long enough for them to get maybe half a mile or more down the road.

"Cousins of yours? And nuns?"

"I don’t know them, Dean. I can't remember… much about that time."

"Sarah made good pancakes," Dean said. "The woman who took you in as her own?" he added, when Sam's mind found nothing of her and he looked at Dean with large, worried eyes. Dean's mind drifted through that side-trip to the skinnydipping he and Sam had done on the night before the big summer party and the demon attack.

"Dean. Dean!" Sam waved his hand in Dean's face. "You were smiling really oddly."

"Uh, yeah, so, okay, nuns. And relatives after you for who knows why. Now we have to wait for them to get far enough ahead that we don't run into them."

"A half hour start will be enough," Sam said, still watching the now-empty crossroads.

"Let's give the horses more of the hay you found, and then get the carriage back on the road."

***

As Dean tugged at the horses' reins, and the horses tugged reluctantly at their braces, the carriage began a slow roll toward the crossroads. Dean moved back alongside it and climbed up to the driver's bench next to Sam.

"Move over."

"Dean, we talked about this. They like me better."

"I got them started, I get to drive. Next time they stop, you can try."

The horses stopped outright, jolting them so hard that Sam and Dean almost fell off the seat.

"Boys," came the cheerful greeting from a man with cold eyes and a stout middle.

"He's a-" Sam started, and they both whispered "demon" simultaneously, seeing his true nature flash across his face. The man smilingly obliged them with a bow.

"Demon, I believe, is what you were about to say out loud, before you so rudely decided that I can't read lips. You two have been together far too long – you're starting to finish each other's sentences."

"Exorcism?" Dean asked Sam quietly.

"Before you do anything stupid, like try to exorcise me, let me make you an offer."

"Exorcism," Sam replied, at full volume.

"Wait!" the demon yelled, his eyes flashing red.

"Oh, god DAMMIT," Dean swore.

"Indeed, Dean. You know quite a lot about damning and God, more than you should at your tender age of, what is it now?" He calculated in the air with his finger. "Several thousand years old? Oh, that worked! Good, now that your mouths are shut and your ears are open, I have a proposal. Take me to Memphis."

Sam and Dean both sat on the carriage watching the odd man, waiting for him to make his deal.

"That was clear, wasn't it?" he asked, obviously irritated.

"Take you to Memphis?" Sam asked.

"Glad to see your time in Hell didn't erase your language skills, Sam."

"No," Dean said. "No deals."

"Well then, I guess our poor hunters Frank and Jesse and our very devout Sisters Cethia and Constanza will come to an unfortunate end. Or worse," he added darkly, the left side of his mouth curling up in a toothy grin.

Dean grimaced.  "We've helped you Red-eyes enough-"

"You killed two of my best lieutenants, that's what you did to help, Dean."  His grin had vanished.  "The things I've had to do for those yellow-eyed bastards since our plans came to light…. No, Dean, I have nothing to thank you for."

"Just take you to Memphis?" Sam repeated, trying to figure out how this was a deal.

"Perhaps they did Swiss cheese your head down there, Sam, and not just your soul. Shall we go?" He climbed into the carriage and settled back on the bench seat, looking more comfortable than Dean had ever felt sitting there.

"Go!" he said, shooing them along with his fingers.

"Sam, are we going to take a demon, even a Red-eye, along with us-"

"Strange things are afoot these days, especially in Memphis. _Especially_ since you two came back. No one can quite figure out how you did it, but we very much want to know."

"Sam, can we just exorcise this pest?"

"Oh for-!" the demon yelled and spoke a word they didn't know. The horses took off in terror, reaching a breakneck speed. In just a few minutes they were closing on the party ahead and before they could rein the horses in, they'd run the hunters off into a ditch on the right, the sisters into some thick shrubs on the left. Once Sam had stopped the carriage, the demon hopped out. He apologized profusely for his "idiot drivers" and offered the carriage's seat to the two women.

"The name is Rex Crosby, 'King of the –' well, I'm a salesman. Won't you join us? We are headed directly to Memphis." The sisters took his hand as help up into the carriage, while Rex and the hunters squeezed into the remaining space while Sam and Dean looked on in disbelief. "Honestly, I need two of them to do one job. Get going! We need to make Memphis as soon as possible," said the demon, winking at them.

***

The ride was anything but peaceful. At ten miles out, the first corpses turned up, bloated and discolored. They'd died trying to drink from the ponds, or trying to cool themselves, and now floated where they died, tainting the water.

"That's water we could have drunk," Dean muttered.

A few miles farther, the smell of sulfur wafted through the air, and behind them, the demon took a deep breath.

"Ooohf," said the younger sister, Cethia, hand over her nose. "That smell."

"Brimstone," said Frank. "Burned to keep the disease from traveling through the air."

"With sulfur everywhere, how would you know when there's a de-" asked Jesse, who was elbowed into silence Frank, while Dean looked nervously over his shoulder at the menagerie they were carrying with them.

"Say," Jesse asked the Rex, whom he so far regarded as a jovial Irishman, "Do you know if there's a Samuel Winchester in this area? Last we heard he was heading to Memphis with his brother."

Sam stared at the road ahead while Dean fidgeted between watching the group in the carriage and watching Sam.

"Sit _still_ ," Sam whispered to him.

"I can't say as I know that name. Samuel Winchester…." He turned it over slowly in his mouth. "And a brother?"

"He's called Dean."

" _Dean Winchester_." The demon caressed every syllable until Dean's skin crawled. "I'll keep an eye out for them. Are they dangerous?"

"Well they have weapons, and know how to use them. But they're not criminals, if that's what you mean. We just have some news for them. Personal kind of news," Jesse said, his voice soft and quiet near the end.

"Do you have a photograph or a drawing of these brothers?" the demon asked, smiling broadly and watching Dean twitch out of the corner of his eye.

"Nothing, no. The woman who sent us kept nothing like that," said the Frank with a certainty that made Jesse look at him in confusion.

"And you ladies?" the demon asked, turning to the sisters. "Coming to help the sick and dying?"

"Yes, Sir," said Cethia, the younger nun. "And you?"

"The sick and dying are so very desperate, I find," said the demon, ignoring her query. "They cling to life, to every little hope, to any tiny promise you make that things will get better."

"They are most vulnerable to both the unscrupulous and to false hope. We offer them the promise of life eternal, and comfort from the word of God," Cethia replied, as she'd been taught.

"God speaks to them, does he?" the demon asked, his tone gone cold.

"God speaks to all who will listen," said Sister Constanza.

"God doesn't speak to Rex Crosby, no matter how nicely he asks," Rex said angrily, and barked again at the horses, which tore off down the road in fear of what they heard behind him. Dean saw his eyes flash red again as he swore; Sam kept his hands tight on the reins to steer the carriage toward the city.

As they drew closer, the bodies along the road grew more numerous. Some were contorted, decayed, or half eaten by animals, others were not yet quite dead, but suffering the final stages - yellow-eyed, bleeding profusely, and insane from fever, or slumped, sweaty, with black vomit down their fronts. Men and women, all ages, were trying to run from a plague that had visited before but had never struck with such ferocity.

From the outlying homes they passed came an occasional scream through the sweltering night air. Those who passed the first fever lied to themselves despite knowing the truth and believed they were over it, had beaten it, but it grew in them and ate at them from the inside, with pain so intense they screamed loud enough to be heard blocks away. The carriage full of passengers was happy to race past the horrors, but Rex sensed opportunity slipping past him with each cry he ignored and he was regretting his earlier words to speed the horses.

***

_Late evening, June 30th, 1875 – Memphis, Tennessee_

Dean spotted the dark figure first, walking slowly up the road toward them, black against the blue night sky. Sam had slowed the horses again to a reasonable pace so they wouldn't burn out, but there was no avoiding the man in the road. The man's head hung down and he walked slowly, staggering now and again. The sisters had taken to saying prayers out loud and the hunters joined them in holding their crosses firmly in their hands; the stout gentleman's "constitution" troubled him suddenly, so he said, but the holy water that Sister Cethia spilled was the last straw.

"I'll join you two up here," the demon said, clambering up and settling on the bench between Sam and Dean. "Might end up dead back there if I'm not careful."

Dean took the reins from Sam to slow the horse more; he could already tell who it was, and feared being recognized. The coach lamps lit his face orange, flickering.

"He's from Memphis, from the college; he'll know me," Dean said softly, and ducked his head, adjusting his boots.

The demon, ever helpful, called out to the man on the road, asking his name. The man turned his head and looked around for who had called him. There was only night and fever heat in his eyes.

"Alexandre," he said, slowly, his tongue swollen. His skin was a sickly yellow color, even in the light of the lamps that hung on the side of the carriage - the jaundice of the late stages.

"We must help him!" cried Sister Cethia.

"We're not in Memphis yet, my dear woman, and I am growing tired of your company and your incessant praying," said Mr. Crosby rudely. "He will die here like the rest."

He grabbed the reins and whipped the horse on; Brother Alexandre fell as they passed, slumping into the weeds on the side of the road. Sister Cethia looked back in horror as Sister Constanza crossed herself. The hunters were whispering to each other, and Dean was tugging at Sam's shirt behind the demon's back.

He mouthed the word 'exorcism' and they began in unison; " _draco maledicte et omnis legio diabolica_ " was all they said before the carriage raced past a sign marking the edge of Memphis and Rex pulled the horses to a stop.  He seemed untouched by their words.

"Have a wonderful stay, boys. Ladies, quite unpleasant riding with you," he said, his eyes flaring red. As for you two idiots, what kind of hunters can't spot a demon in a day? Doubly blind you are; this is Samuel on my left and Dean on my right."

With a look of pitying disgust, he vanished.

"Sam, run!" Dean yelled.

Sam sprang from the carriage seat to the road below, Dean grabbed their satchel and leaped after him, and they both took off toward the center of town.

Sister Cethia sat transfixed, staring at the empty spot where a demon with fiery red eyes had looked right at her and then disappeared. Jesse was trying to climb up onto the driver's seat, calling out "Samuel? Wait! Your Aunt Sarah wrote you before she died-" but Frank shoved him aside and took the reins. Sister Constanza still spoke the exorcism Sam and Dean had begun.

"No point to that now," said Frank.

Sister Constanza finished, her perspiring face shining in the lamp light, and looked at him. "Every bit of good is worth doing. It all has a point."

"To each his own," Frank replied. "We can chase them down faster with the carriage. Get out now or sit tight."

"We'll get out," said Cethia suddenly, and took Sister Constanza's hand to help her down. "Not another minute in this cursed vehicle. Do you realize we were in the presence of a demon?"

Constanza worried about the excitement in Cethia's voice, but the night pressed in on them, as hot and sticky as their habits after the day's ride. As the carriage left them farther behind, they had to hurry through the starlit dark to get to the church.

***

Sam and Dean ran as fast as they could, Dean guiding Sam from behind as Sam's longer legs took him ahead. The city they returned to was empty but for a few people lingering on the wharf, hoping to swim down, up or across the Mississippi, away in any direction in the dark of night. They ran through an unfamiliar city spoiled by clouds of sulfur vapors and rotting bodies, streets coated with lime and bits of old theater bills torn down to put up warning posters and daily death counts. The hunters from Tennessee left off their chase when they saw what kind of slaughter they'd run headlong into.

"Left here, Sam, left. Away from the river. Now right, into the alley. I'll see if we're being followed."

"What about Malachi's place?" Sam asked, glancing back up the empty alley to where a pitch fire smoked.

"Not a chance. He's watched by the angels now."

"Angels are supposed to be the good guys, Dean."

"I'm starting to think we're the only good guys left, Sam, and that's just sad."

They had no pursuers, perhaps because they'd ducked into an alley stacked high with coffins waiting to be moved to Elmwood Cemetery. They were ten deep and five high in groups all the way down the length of the block, and some had been there for weeks, judging by the odor and the filth on them.

"What do we do now, Dean?" Sam asked, fighting against his stomach.

"We need to get to Molly's," said Dean, and took Sam's hand in his. "Before we're seen and before I throw up."

***

"Hell was… well, worse, but not much worse than this," Dean said as he and Sam moved together, shoulder to shoulder down the street towards Molly's house, watching the night around them for demons, or angels, or hunters. Ahead on the left, the familiar house towered above Adams Avenue, its paired second-story windows staring out at the depleted, smoldering town that bore its plague like all towns bore plagues – wondering what they had done to bring Hell to Earth.

"What exactly do I say to her?" Sam asked.

"What do you have to say, Sam? I’m the one who killed Simon."

"She knows why you – she knows you couldn't control the knife. But coming back from the dead is pretty big for most people."

"Molly's seen a lot – seeing you won't be the oddest thing. And sorry to beat you to it, but I came back first."

"Yeah, about that - Why did you do something so stupid, Dean?"

Dean stopped abruptly and looked at Sam, who saw pain he hadn't noticed for days.

"I did it to get to you. Tez couldn't send me in, demons wouldn't take my soul-"

"Not that I'm not… well I'm _not_ grateful, Dean. It was your soul you put at risk."

"You're welcome."

"Don't joke about it. It was a mistake."

"Can we continue this where it doesn't smell like a dragon swallowed an outhouse, Sam? Please?"

Sam persisted, holding Dean from walking toward the house.

"I got Dad out, and you, and me," Dean said. "What part of that should I undo?"

"Ends and means, Dean. It was the wrong way and you know it."

"No other way," Dean argued, his voice straining under the weight of his triple killing and Sam's sudden disapproval. "Let's not forget who went in first."

"That's not fair and you know it. I made no deals – Az wanted _me_. And he wanted to hurt you as much as possible."

"People push me, I push back," Dean said, the menace in his voice rising up from his youth in Kansas City, a bloody past he thought he'd left behind.

"But murder-suicide, Dean?"

"Suicide-accidental manslaughter. And a reaper, whatever that counts as."

"Is that our punishment? Repeating the same mistakes everyone else made, over and over again? Fear, grief, separation, is that all we are? There has to be a different road."

"Say what you want to say, Sam. I did it for you."

"That just hurts more, Dean!" Sam said, the pain clear now in his narrowed eyes, pain for himself and sympathy for his brother, who faced a hopeless choice.

"Mr. W!" said a familiar voice, stern, never motherly, from the darkness of the porch. They saw Molly at the top of the steps, fatigue clear despite her endless strength. She was caught in the golden light of an oil lamp held near her face.

"Come inside and bring him with you."

"She didn't even flinch," Sam said quietly, leaning in to whisper it.

"She never has," Dean replied, and pushed Sam ahead of him up the stairs.

 


	12. The Fall and Rise of Azazel Yellow-Eyes

_After midnight, July 1, 1875 – Adams Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee_

The house was pitch dark, stifling hot, and carried the same stench as the street, only a bit milder. Molly's head floated in the gloom; her black mourning dress seemed to soak up what little light the lamp gave off.

"You know you're being hunted and you stand out in the open street, quarreling about who is the bigger fool?" She held the lamp out at him, like a weapon.

"Mol-"

"Mr. W., you need a plan. There are creatures out there that want you dead." She took charge in his momentary silence, as she always had. "You and Sam won't have a future if you don't smarten up. Sit and we'll talk."

"Do you have anything to drink?" Dean asked her timidly.

She huffed and vanished into the kitchen with the lamp, leaving them in the inky dark of her silent parlor.

"She's angry," Sam said softly, from somewhere in the darkness to the right of Dean.

"Of course she is, Sam. Sit down. Not on me!"

Molly returned with two opened beers.

"Water's no good – even boiled it tastes like sulfur. The wells are drying up, the cows are dead and the weather's hotter every day. I swear one of you left the door to Hell open when you came out."

Sam laughed and suppressed it immediately. Molly turned the lamp up a bit and set it on the table where it cast a soft glow that encompassed only the three of them.

"Tez came looking for you," she said quietly. "Twice."

"He knew where we were," Dean said, surprised.

"I assumed so, since he told me how to find you when summer began. He asked odd questions about people in town – even the gods don't know what's going on."

"Something's up, Dean," Sam said. "Remember how Tez warned us about Azazel getting here before us?"

"And that demon said strange things were happening." Dean repeated Rex's remark for Molly.

"Strange things _are_ happening, Dean," Molly continued. "People are falling to this plague faster than I've ever seen. No one knows how it spreads, but it has taken close to half the populace, or half of what was left behind when the rest fled."

"Why are you still here?"

"I'm taking care of the sick," she replied quite factually. "I couldn't leave. This is my house, and they need my help."

"You might die too," Sam said.

"I doubt it. I had fevers as a child. My grandmother said they would shield me. Once I was touched, I couldn't be touched again by the sickness, she believed. So far, she's right."

Dean's beer, downed in a few gulps, was too weak to affect him, but the warm closeness of the room, Sam's voice in its familiar and comforting cadences, and Molly's unchanging solidity all conspired to relax him for the first time in days. The room reminded him of his bedroom in Salina, apart from the stench that seeped in from the streets. Sam was here again, for real, _his_ again after a year and a half of lonely searches, deals with demons, and a hallucination that he'd actually spoken with Death, itself. Sam was sitting there two feet away, alive, unburned, rescued, rejoined. Molly was in widow's weeds, but spoke to him still, even looked at him.

Dean's mind settled into this moment of comfort and the conversation in front of him blurred into mumbling, the soft murmurs of two people he loved and hadn't lost.

***

"Molly, could we get more beer? In the kitchen?" Sam asked, nodding that direction and gesturing with the bottle to Dean. "Getting more beer."

"Good," Dean said, smiling softly.

Molly understood Sam's meaning and they disappeared through another room into the large pantry. She retrieved three beers, opening one for herself. Sam stood looking at the table, lost in something he needed to say. Molly watched him for a while, trying to guess what he was now – if he was a man even.

"You were in the underworld, Samuel," she said bluntly. "My grandmother told me of the underworld and its strange laws. She knew the story of the two brothers who escaped it, even in death."

Sam's eyes were on her now, fixed and frightened. She could see the tears forming.

"Everyone thinks Hell is a lake of fire, demons stabbing you with pitchforks," he said, nearly laughing, but his voice lost all its power. "It's so much worse than that." It dropped to a barely audible whisper. "So much worse."

Molly waited until he stopped looking at what was not there and turned his eyes to her again.

"She warned me, if I was unfortunate in life, I would meet the brothers on their way into Hell, and they'd take me in with them to share their fight."

"Molly, I-"

"And if I was truly doomed, she said… I would meet them on their way out of Hell, and they would spare me from their battle, only to give me a different task."

"We aren't those brothers."

"No, you aren't the brothers of her myths, but we are all unfortunate in this, Samuel. You, and Dean, and I. We witness and we work to turn the misfortune around but it is all misfortune still."

"Molly, don't blame him. He did it to save me. None of this would have happened if I hadn't been so … sure, so confident I could face up to Azathunn and free our parents. Azathunn took me instead of Dean because he knows I'm capable of evil."

"And you think good isn't capable of evil? Dean did what he had to do, to save you. But he chose the worst path toward good."

Sam was slumped on a small wooden chair by the counter. He seemed ready to cry, but nothing came. The fear she'd seen earlier reappeared instead.

"I can't remember how I met him," Sam said finally, his voice low and ashamed.

"He remembers. Vividly. Ask him," she said, her voice calm and full of forgiveness.

"I can't remember my father at all."

"Best not to ask him that. He never much liked that man."

"He freed our father from Hell, before we left," Sam said, weeping openly now.

Molly came closer and took Sam's hand.

"What you endured in the underworld, I have no conception of. But this is not finished. There are new people arriving in town every day, people who say they were called here by angels, others who say they came because of debts they owe. No one should be coming into a plague-ridden pit, Samuel, but they arrive every day."

"We brought two nuns with us, and two men who were looking for me, hunters from my hometown. And a demon, who insisted."

"We need a plan. We need to be ready, Samuel. Memories can be remade but the world cannot."

"Ready for what?"

"When forces gather, what other outcome is there? Dean will take the fight to them, plan or no plan. Wake him up and we'll make our plans carefully."

In the distance, Sam could hear Dean snoring softly in the parlor.

***

Dean snapped awake with a start, pretending an alertness that his frequent eye-rubbing and yawning belied.

Sam, with Molly's help, started the conversation, and when it shifted into a discussion of Tez and the motives behind his actions, Dean finally stepped in actively.

"He wanted to keep us out of Hell, Sam. He said we would be lost if we went in."

"But we got out, Dean."

"He sent me into what I thought was Hell twice, just to discourage it. Why did he lie to me?"

"He threatened to kill you both when he found you together," Molly countered.

"He has his own interests at heart," Sam agreed. "Dean, think about it, if we come back again, or don't, why does he care?"

"How can we know what gods care about?" Dean protested, but he knew it was weak.

"We need to know, Dean," Sam said, more determined than ever. "Because they keep using us."

Dean sat back, uncertain of how to refute that. "Okay, so he wants us dead. Because that would protect us?"

"Heaven and Hell both want us dead," Sam said. "The angels are working with the demons."

Molly's eyes widened when he said that, and she took hold of the small crucifix around her neck, and then let go of it just as quickly.

"Azathunn and Tez said they divided the world," Sam continued. "But the demons were building a tower to reach into this world. Why?"

"To fight," Molly said.

Sam looked at her, worried. "With the people gathering here?"

"Did I miss something?" Dean asked.

"Molly says there are people coming into Memphis, even with the quarantine, even with the yellow fever taking some of them when they arrive."

"The nuns came to help," Dean said, not liking the alternative.

"I'm sure they all have reasons, but a demon? Why was Rex coming?"

"Lots of desperate souls, willing to make a deal to get out?"

"And hunters looking for me, specifically?"

Dean put his head down in his hands. "Can we sleep on this?" he asked softly.

"Dean, Tez knows where we are, he has to."

"Let's sleep, Sam. If he shows up, I'll deal with him."

Molly took them up the stairs to the room Dean had stayed in the year before. It was oppressively hot, and the new electric fan only blew more heat onto them. The narrow bed forced them together, where they stuck, sweaty, Sam's right leg stretched out to the floor, while Dean tried to press against the cooler wall and ignore the naked man next to him. Dean drifted off to sleep eventually, repeating to himself that it was Molly's house, not his brothel.

_No sex. No sex. No…_

Sam lay there, eyes closed, thinking of what he'd do to Azathunn when they met again. He listened to his brother's deep, slow breaths, and followed Dean into sleep.

***

_July 1, 1875_

Morning came, 85 degrees and sunny, with screams from the house across the street - another soul had failed to make it through the night. Sam and Dean were instantly awake, hearts pounding. Lying sweat-soaked and stiff in the bed, Dean could hear the body collector's bell and his rhythmic call coming closer down the block.

"What the hell happened to my town?" he asked, staring at the ceiling.

"Azazel," Sam answered, lying beside him in the relative cool of the morning.

"Then why was a red-eyed demon coming here?" asked Dean.

"A fight. Lucifer and Michael fought, and the angels and demons have fought ever since. It's all they know. The demons want to destroy Heaven."

"The feeling is mutual, I'm sure, Sam. But Malachi said it was a war to end humanity. We're the cannon fodder for their grudge."

"We need to find out what's going on, Dean. How long do you think it would take us to summon Rex Crosby?"

"I'd rather ask Malachi, if you don't mind. And what about Tez? He'll show up soon enough."

"I don't think-" Sam said, then stopped.

"Say what you need to say, Sam; it's too damn hot to wait for you to feel comfortable being honest with me."

"Question what we're doing, Dean," Sam said angrily.

"I _do_ question it, and the answer is always 'Because I'm stupid.'"

Sam shifted up onto one elbow and looked at Dean. The morning light was exactly the same as in Kansas three summers earlier, filtering through the same white curtains, and Dean was, for that moment, young again, unworried, unscarred, just a nervous man in love wondering who this tall figure in his bed was, and what changes he brought.

"I love you, Dean. You're brave. But I know how far you'll go to keep me alive. I just think Tez has other motives," Sam said, "motives he won't share, or can't."

"And Azathunn? He ripped your soul apart. I know I can't magic-touch all your memories back into you, and you've got a few holes in there. Why spare him the blame?"

"They're just like us, Dean."

"We're _not_ just like them."

"They chose to be apart; they've been apart forever. But what would they most want, even if it killed them?"

Dean thought for a while in silence.

"What did you want most when I was gone?" Sam asked. The thought was not new to Dean, but it had a new power now as Sam laid it out.

"To know you were okay," Dean said quickly.

"And?"

"To touch you," Dean said more quietly.

"I'm not sure they can even be together any more. It could kill them."

"It could kill _us_ , Sam."

Dean looked at his brother, and he was not young and alive, but old beyond his twenty-five years, tired and worn.

"Let's get rid of them both, then," Dean said, his eyes darker. "And you take Tez. He won't know what hit him," Dean suggested. He was about to give in and overlook the sanctity of Molly's house when she knocked on the door to say the hot water was ready and they could shave.

"I know that tone," Dean said.

"Keep the sideburns. I like them," Sam said.

The paper was waiting for them downstairs, shrunk to only four pages by the lack of paper, printers, and news beyond the daily horror. It was filled with death notices; the front page belonged to Rev. Charles Parsons and Brother Alexandre from the college, both dead the day before of the fever.

' _As on a battlefield_ ,' Molly read from the headline.

"We'll be ready," Sam said.

***

Molly left for the hospital at eight, after a meager breakfast and a long discussion about what their next steps would be. She didn't question the summoning of demons or angels any more.

Sam and Dean walked down the long stairs to the street, which was devoid of life except for a few hungry dogs. The ruckus across the street had settled, but the body collector would be back soon enough. The stench of the day was a shock in itself, embedded in a wet heat that was beyond what they'd bargained for. Sweat ran down Sam's neck already, making his new shirt cling to him.

Dean stopped at the bottom of the stairs before they set foot on the pavement, and as Sam moved to head west toward the river, Dean held him back, an arm across his chest.

"What?" Sam asked, alert for danger.

"Why are we doing this separately? You and Malachi, me and a demon we met yesterday?"

"I'll be okay, Dean."

"I just think… we could be more effective together," Dean argued. Inside, he waited for Sam to say 'Sure, come with me' but Sam only looked at him, puzzled.

"I'll be okay," he said again, as if Dean didn't accept it the first time. "We've been together since I came back, almost two solid weeks, Dean." He wished he could pull the words back in as soon as he said them because he saw now the one thing that still scared his fearless brother.

"Yeah, it's been a long time. Can't be together every minute," Dean choked out with no ease at all.

"Dean," Sam said, putting his hand on Dean's chest. "I know. I feel like if I close my eyes or turn my back, you'll be gone, but you never are. I went through a century in Hell, I almost forgot who you were, and you walked right in again. I can't shake you."

"You want to get away from all this, I get that," Dean said, his face flushed.

"I do. I- I _don't_ ," Sam said before giving up in confusion. "I took care of myself for twenty-two years, Dean, and so did you."

Dean cleared his throat and put his hand over Sam's. "So take your hand off me and go find that sniveling angel. I've got a demon to beat some information out of."

"Close your eyes," Sam said quietly.

"What?"

"Close them."

Dean felt the firm, warm kiss, quickly given and quickly taken away, and Sam's hand left his chest. He didn't dare open his eyes, even as Sam moved away down the street.

"You can open them now, Dean," Sam said, looking back over his shoulder, laughing.

"No, I'm… I'm fine, like this."

Dean opened his eyes soon enough to see Sam a few blocks away, heading for the small house by the river that Malachi called home.

"See you, Sam. You promised."

Dean rolled up his sleeves and set out for the crossroads at the northern edge of town where they'd last seen Rex.

***

Sam knocked on the front door of Malachi's house, got no response, and found it locked when he tried the handle. He went around to the back where he found Malachi in the yard in a pose that he'd never imagined an angel in, praying on his knees with arms outstretched.

Sam cleared his throat, but Malachi ignored him.

"It's Sam Winchester."

Malachi spun around, a worried look on his face. "You're in danger."

"Look, I know Tez wasn't happy-"

"Not Tez. The Garrison. They are gathering. They'll use Dean and Azathunn will use you; they'll put you at the head of their armies."

"Then we need to stop that from happening."

"I should never have doubted them. Uriel will find me soon enough and I'll pay for deceiving them."

"Malachi, I need to talk to this angel Uriel. I want to make a deal."

"What?!"

"Time to end this."

***

"Show yourself, Rex. Time's wasting." Dean lit the herbs and threw them into circle of salt at the crossroads.

"I suppose you would see it that way," came the irritated voice from behind him.

"Why aren't you-??" Dean said as he whipped around, certain he'd done the summoning exactly as Sam had told him.

"Oh, you did it right. Don't beat yourself up, Dean. It's just... I'm not IN Hell at the moment. I'm in Memphis, and it's very, very similar, but you could have just called."

"Rex. King of what, exactly?" Dean wondered aloud.

"King of where I stand, and all the deals made here, until some better crossroads demon comes along and makes himself king. Would you like to make a deal? The embargo on your soul has been lifted, and Azazel might just talk to me again if I brought you in."

"All right," Dean said quickly.

The demon's jaw dropped just a little bit, for the briefest of seconds. Dean counted it among his few true victories over evil.

"Take me to Azazel," Dean demanded, his fists clenched tight.

Rex wondered at the mystery of free will so easily abdicated, and was immediately suspicious.

***

At the Marine hospital, Sister Cethia waited patiently for Molly to arrive and show them what needed doing. The convent's beds had long since filled, and when three of the remaining sisters died, they moved half of the patients to the Marine hospital. Molly took Cethia to the ward and introduced her to the ill, one of whom expired during their visit.

"It's so much worse than we hear about outside," Cethia began, while still on the ward. "And we lost that man we saw on the way in, Brother Alexandre, on top of all the other losses."

"But you came when we called," Molly said. "We are very grateful that you will minister to the sick."

"Have you been touched by the fever?" Cethia asked.

"I have not. I believe some people are not susceptible to it. Sister Margaret has worked here for two months and seen the worst cases, but she continues on."

"That God would do such things…"

"I would hope _you_ had the answer to that, Sister."

"It was not a doubt, Mrs. Hildebrandt; I do not doubt God has a purpose for their suffering."

Molly gave Cethia a look of pity, and said, "Perhaps it is best not to say that God sees value in our patients' pain when you are wiping the blood from their mouths."

***

"I cannot-" Malachi said, terrified of something he wouldn't name.

"I have something he wants," Sam said confidently.

"Samuel, no, he's an archangel. He will see through whatever this trick is!"

Malachi's house shook. In the dim and empty room that opened off the yard, there was a man with a light summer suit, a pale beard and mustache and matching shock of white hair, and a cold look in his eye.

"Come in, Samuel," he said. "Before we speak, may I send Malachi back to Heaven – so that we can speak privately?"

Malachi grabbed at Sam's arm.

"I have to do this, Malachi," Sam whispered as he turned, but Malachi was gone already.

"I never understood the fascination. That blasphemer's unending search for God, or yours for your brother."

"Uriel."

"Samuel. Practically an angel's name. I should kill you for that alone." The disgust dripped from his voice, a Southern gentleman's voice, rich with the air of Charleston. "We have worked so hard to be rid of you and still you return."

"Hear me out," Sam said, hiding his fear.

"You have nothing I want, except Dean."

"I can give you Dean, but he's in the middle of selling his soul."

"Who would have it and not ask my permission?"

Sam stared back without answering.

"That worthless excuse for a god. Malachi bows to him; Dean follows his every whim."

"I don't like it any more than you do. Take me to Tez. We can both settle our differences with him."

***

Dean was instantly regretting his request to meet Azazel. "That's the deal," Dean said as firmly as he still could.

"That's half the deal. I haven't said what I get." Rex looked at Dean, sizing him up. "We need him gone."

"I can do that."

"Of course you can't. You wouldn't know how to kill Yellow-eyes. You have no power."

"I don't need to kill him. I just need a few minutes."

"Am I your secretary as well? Oh, fine," said the demon. "The insufferable hostage role suits you."

They vanished and reappeared seconds later in a room with a small boy, who eyed them with fear, but didn't move from his bed. His eyes were yellow, and death was closing in quickly. His father came into the room with a wet towel, not even noticing the two men in the corner.

"He's left his wife to die upstairs while he cares for the boy," Rex whispered in Dean's ear, far too close and heavy. "But the boy's going soon. So tell me, which one dies – the boy or the father?"

"No!" Dean hissed back, and the man looked up in fear, seeing them now. He froze.

"You need a lot to get Azazel's attention these days," said Rex. "Which one, Dean?" The demon's voice was all insincere concern and genuine curiosity.

"Don't make me."

"I won't. You'll make yourself do it."

The father looked imploringly at Dean and put himself between the men and his son.

"Him," Dean said quickly and looked away.

The man's blood filled a bowl in no time, while the son watched, lost in fever.

"Come. Now. I have him," Rex said, his face low over the blood.

Dean shuddered at the voice he thought he heard reply. It seemed to come from all around him. Rex looked over Dean's shoulder, and then bowed his head. Dean turned.

Behind him was a hungry looking man dressed in the stiff and ill-fitting clothing of a preacher, a tall hat on his head, and below the brim, yellow eyes and a wicked smile.

***

_July 1, 1875 - Gambler's Tavern, Memphis Tennessee_

Molly left the hospital care to the sisters and the few other volunteers who remained. The doctor on call for the day was seated at the end of the ward for now, but would soon leave for a less unpleasant room upstairs. The stench of death stayed in her nose even as she entered the bar nearest the hospital.

She glanced at the barkeep, whom she knew well, and he nodded to the two men at the table in back, strangers. She took them for what they were, hunters, and had little patience for subterfuge or delay.

"Explain yourselves."

"I beg your pardon ma'am?" said the stockier one.

"If you are after demons, I strongly suggest you leave town. Memphis is far beyond your abilities if you can't even disguise yourselves in a bar."

"What's she talking about, Frank?" asked the thinner one.

"I'm asking why two hunters showed up here. This isn't a hunter's bar."

"How does a woman know where hunters gather?"

"How does a man _not_ know that women hunt? I have twenty minutes left on my midday break, so get to the point."

"We're looking for Samuel Winchester," said the thinner one. Frank kicked him. "We _are_!" he continued, "and I have a message from his aunt, given to me before she died. I was entrusted to deliver it. From Sarah to Samuel."

"I know three Samuels, and not a single Winchester," Molly said, sounding as tired as she could.

"It's Winchester all right," said Frank. "We saw him on a carriage with his brother, and a demon they were friendly with. Same carriage that brought in the sisters who work at your hospital. Word around town is you might know who Dean Winchester is."

"I can't help you. But my advice is to get out before the yellow fever gets you. If it hasn't already. The first signs are thirst, and a sensation of overheating," Molly said, turning away.

Jesse's eyes grew larger and he looked around him for the skeletal hand of Death, and he said hurriedly, "Tell Sam, if you ever meet him, that Sarah wanted to apologize for chasing him and his brother off. And she's passed now," he said.

Frank sat silently, staring at his whiskey.

"Leave this town before you pass on too," Molly said, as dramatically as possible.

She left with a nodded promise from the barkeep that he'd tell her anything else he observed.

When she stepped out the door, she almost collided with a man who was equally unfamiliar to the neighborhood. A hot hand pressed tight over her mouth as he passed her and she was pulled struggling into a shaded alleyway.

The man in front of her now was a hunter too, a far more experienced one, who'd bound her arms together before she could react, and got right to the point.

"How quickly will they come to your rescue?"

"Who?" she bluffed.

"Samuel. Dean. I know they're here. The archangel speaks the truth."

Molly saw the fervor in eyes and the heard the excitement in his voice as he said the word "truth."

"Who are you?" she asked.

"The Lord's weapon, Joseph Kearney. I will lead us into battle against the army of Hell."

"You're burning up," she said, and he shook her hard and shoved her against the wall.

"You tolerate their sodomy, their incestuous love, their deals with the devil and with fallen angels. You will die with them in the war that is coming."

"As will you, Mr. Kearney."

"I hope and pray this every day," he said, sweat trickling down his cheeks. His blood was already finding its way into his ears and his stomach, and he shivered as he held her throat.

***

Uriel barked out Tez's name, but no one appeared.

"May I try?" Sam asked.

"Insolent ant!" Uriel roared at him and was about to strike when Tez appeared.

"Samuel is like a brother to me, angel. Would you dare kill him?"

Uriel's demeanor changed remarkably, but the resentment remained.

"He offered to bring Dean to us."

"Why would you do that? Where is Dean?"

"I needed to talk to you. Alone."

"Go," Tez said, and Uriel vanished from Malachi's house.

***

Uriel opened a different door – a door that lead to a room empty of furnishings, in the middle of which stood a large man in a shabby brown suit that his vessel had favored once.

"You no longer kneel, Malachi?"

"I kneel for God, because he does exist."

"Of course he exists, and he has commanded us to rule Heaven and Earth as we see fit until he returns."

"He said no such thing."

"You are not his child!" Uriel bellowed, striking Malachi to the floor. "I am."

"We all are," Malachi said firmly.

"You turn your back on us, even as Azazel and the others did? Would you join them in Hell? I would happily tear your wings from you, for you stink of humanity, your clothes stink, your very soul has their odor on it."

"And you are dripping with the darkness of Hell, even here in Heaven, for joining forces with them against God and against all the angels." Malachi stood up again and faced Uriel. He smiled, and it was his undoing.

Uriel summoned the most loyal of the Garrison and told them to end Malachi. "One wing at a time," were his exact words. He watched them cut and tear, but Malachi still smiled.

"What will stop the Recurrence?" Uriel asked over and over again, convinced that Tez wanted it to continue for his own perverse reasons.

As the last fibers were being sliced, out of delirium and pain and hope all run together in the face of his grace departing, Malachi laughed: "Nothing can stop it, not even Death's hand that set them on their way."

Uriel looked at him strangely, motioning the others away.

"What will you say when you face Death?" he asked Malachi, pressing close in.

"Sam and Dean will return," Malachi said softly.

"How do we stop the Recurrence? How do we find them if they're reborn?!" Uriel demanded.

"Sam and Dean will return," Malachi repeated, lost in his own death. He said it over and over again like a prayer, and at last Uriel understood the truth Malachi unknowingly spoke. He took Malachi from the room and gave him rest, tending his wing to heal the gap they'd torn in it. He left Malachi to recover and turned to another place, a place outside of Heaven and Hell, devoid of life. There was only stone as far as he could see, and above, the sickening cloud of Hell. Azazel did not come, but Uriel waited without impatience, a small smile playing across his face from time to time.

***

_July 1, 1875 - Poplar Street, Memphis_

"It's been so long since you ripped your brother away from us. We still hurt." Azazel's voice was bitter pathos, tempered by his clasped hands, a priestly gesture in any other situation.

Dean grimaced, wanting nothing more than to end this demon.

"I want to speak to Azathunn," Dean said, not flinching as Azazel's eyes burned yellow.

Rex settled on the bed next to the dying boy, curious as always, and watched. Dean could see him grinning, but Azazel ignored him.

"You would come back to Hell, without Sam? Azathunn has no use for you."

"Azathunn fears me," Dean said.

Azazel laughed loud, a sound that made Dean's spine crawl. The boy in the bed closed his eyes tight.

"Bring him here. I know he can come," Dean insisted. Rex looked impressed.

"Yes, you know what he can do on Earth. He almost killed you, all those years ago when Mommy died and Daddy ran off with the real prize. You amaze me, Dean. You don't just lie, cheat and steal, like other humans. You've been a hired killer for that bitch Sal, you've been a whore-monger, you enjoy whiskey and fucking your own brother far too much. You've killed demons, and you seem to believe you're here to kill gods too. You've even killed _yourself_." He punctuated this with a sharp finger to the scar on Dean's chest with each syllable. "And yet you keep putting yourself up as the face of Heaven. And they allow it! How far they've fallen."

"Far enough to work with you," Dean said childishly, trying to ignore the truth of his biography.

"Oh, you don't have to fall to work with me," Azazel sneered. "I'm very open to collaboration."

"Bring him here. I have a message from Sam."

"I'll be off - souls to gather," said Rex nervously, and vanished.

"Just us then," Azazel said, and snapped the boy's neck across the room with a wave of his hand.

Dean could feel the flames closing in, and he was five again, and his neck burned.

 


	13. The Arc of His Wings

_July 1, 1875 – Mud Island Road, Memphis_

"Uriel sent Malachi away – to Heaven, he said."

"I know where my disciples are, Sam."

"I saw you once before, as you truly are."

"At the crossroads, before I could save-"

"You didn't come to save me. Or Dean. You came for your brother."

Tez didn't answer, he merely waited.

"Well, he's back," Sam said, hoping Dean could make Azathunn appear, as awful as it would be for him.

"I know when he's here. I always know. He's been poking around this world forever, angry at God, burning things for fun-" Tez stopped there, feeling his brother's fire burn through into the world.

"He's looking for you," Sam said.

Tez looked at Sam for a long time, his dark eyes studying Sam inside and out it seemed. "Love of family - it's a weakness we share," he said finally.

"Curious thing to call a weakness, don't you think? Maybe it's _not_ ," Sam ventured.

He reached out and touched Tez again, and the same overwhelming images came to them both, nearly splitting Sam's head open. He was in a storm, begging his brother not to ask what he asked, rain-soaked and stuck to the man beneath him, stuck to the ground itself, red mud that gripped them both. When he pulled back his hand, he knew why Dean had sent him here.

"Come lead the battle, Tez."

"I can't-"

"For Dean. For me," Sam said, and in his head Tez saw Azathunn over him, begging him to fight.

***

Azazel left Dean standing in a cyclone of flames and appeared at the roofless building.

"Here so soon?" Uriel said, smiling.

"Shut up. Your humor is tiresome."

"Do you know the purpose of the Recurrence, brother?" Uriel asked.

"To guard the humans."

"That's only part of it," he teased, reveling in his superiority.

"It's the only part we care about."

"And why was your Satan so afraid of them both? Why all the effort to separate them? Because they exist to remove your 'Lord'.

"And his useless brother?"

"Yours is the greater disappointment, I think," Uriel smirked.

Azazel's eyes flared yellow. "He is worse than useless, but his power is real. I will not lose it."

"Set your anger aside. The death of these two humans in the battle is no longer a matter we need fear. They will return exactly as they are, as Samuel and Dean Winchester."

"Where do you hear these fantastic tales, Uriel?"

"I tortured it out of a traitor," Uriel said, and looked pointedly at Azazel, whose wings, long since gone, still stung with a pain not even Lucifer could burn out of him.

"We can still kill them?" Azazel asked.

"We have only to wait. If we fail to destroy them utterly in the coming battle, we wait for their souls to reappear on Earth. They won't know their role when they return, any more than they did this time, but we'll know them."

Azazel glowered at Uriel. "Why wait so long? Samuel is ready to fight, his brother is ready to die. We'll see the end of them now."

***

Tez had vanished, thoughts of Azathunn and Sam in his mind.

Sam slumped onto the floor in Malachi's unused living room, his head pounding. He watched the striped mosquitos swoop lazily into the still air of the house in search of life-giving blood. They followed him as he headed from the riverfront house, all the way into town, where a black cloud of smoke from the burning pitch fire by the hotel finally drove them off.

Sam rubbed his eyes, coughing and choking on the fumes and ran straight into a woman in a dress that was years out of style.

"Mr. Whitman!" she cried.

Sam lowered his handkerchief and opened his stinging eyes, and his heart sank. Worse than any demon was the old busybody who'd driven them from Salina.

"What the hell are you doing here?" sprang from his mouth. "Mrs. Tyler," he added when he saw the shock in her face.

"I see you haven't changed but for the worse, Samuel. Picked up the most tragic of your friend's qualities – I hoped for so much more for you. But you've clearly fallen on hard times," she added judgmentally, looking at the well-worn clothes Sam had on.

"I've been through Hell," he said, hoping this encounter would end.

"I sincerely doubt that. Hell is for the truly wicked, and no matter what you've done, it could not be as bad as what that awful Mr. Campbell did to my city. That was long before you arrived."

"Has Salina recovered?" Sam asked patronizingly, eyes still stinging.

"Well, no," Mrs. Tyler admitted. "It rather went downhill, but that is no doubt due to his business suppressing all the other legitimate entertainments we might have had. When they can be convinced to open in Salina, it will rebloom. I'm on my way to the church now. Come with me and we can catch up."

She grabbed Sam's hand and pulled him along toward the only church left, which was not her denomination of Christianity but, as she took great pains to explain, was "good in spite of that." Sam settled in a pew on the left, looking back at the door that had closed tight behind him.

"Mrs. Tyler, I need to be at a – I have an important appointment."

"With whom, if not with God?"

"Well, in a way…." Sam wondered if telling her how the world actually worked would harm or help.

"I won't be long. I can't stand their incense. They do that for the Catholics."

"Mrs. Tyler!" Sam protested, and was hushed by two women a few rows ahead. He nodded solicitously. "Mrs. Tyler," he whispered, leaning close to her, "I have a favor to ask of you, although it is you who deserves the favor."

She responded well to the flattery, as he knew she would. He tidied his hair and brushed the dirt from his clothes and smiled broadly as he took her hand. It still had the same effect that had worked wonders in Salina, whether getting him out of one of her inedible dinners, or convincing her not to storm the brothel with her followers.

"I've come to Memphis to find the woman who once worked with Dean." She tensed at that, and he put his other hand on top of hers, and hoped. "She is reformed. She has married, and set up a home, and now works at the Marine hospital as a nurse. I was going to meet her at the hospital, but I have somewhere else I must be. Could I impose?"

"I was planning to-"

"What can we do, trapped as we are in the city, but help each other when in need. You helped us once, in Salina. Your money got Molly out of town alive, even if it was for other reasons that you acted. You were humane, even when those around you grew bloodthirsty."

Mrs. Tyler was enjoying this too much to agree so quickly, but the service ended, and the door would be open only so long, to keep the city air out.

"Tell her to stay at the hospital. She must not leave."

"I will find your Molly and convey your message," she promised, and Sam knew her word was good.

 _I'm sorry, Molly. Very sorry. You didn't need this today,_ Sam thought, watching Mrs. Tyler head off into the desolate city.

He headed in the opposite direction.

***

Molly was in the tavern again, caught between the hard slats of a chair and the barrel of Kearney's gun. The hunters had left before Kearney shoved her in there, and the barkeep lay unconscious behind the bar, a large bump on his head.

Kearney was ranting, a manic state made more terrible by the blood that he spat up. Molly feared his finger would squeeze the trigger each time he coughed, or that his fever would spread to her through sheer will.

Across the street stood Mrs. Tyler, looking at the tavern in horror and reminding herself that a good member of the Women's' Christian Temperance League would not hesitate to enter such a place if it meant she might bring it down, or at the least bring the lost souls inside out into the light. The tavern confirmed every memory she had of Molly, and she wasn't surprised when the hospital staff said she could find her here instead of at her post. They'd seemed worried by her absence, but to Mrs. Tyler, it all made a sad kind of sense.

"Come on, in we go," she said to herself for the fourth time, and her feet obeyed.

***

Mrs. Tyler's scream at the scene before her was enough to distract Kearney, although she'd had a whole anti-drink speech ready to go. Molly snatched the gun from him and gave him the same bruise the barkeep had. He crumpled.

"You?!" was all Molly could think or say.

"I have a message from Mr. Whitman."

"From whom?" Molly asked, drawing a blank and wondering if Mrs. Tyler had grown senile in the intervening years.

"Samuel," Mrs. Tyler said, with a different tone in her voice.

"Yes! Yes," Molly said. "Tell me, please. Come with me."

"I don't think we should-"

"To my house. You'll find it very much to your liking. It's very big," Molly said.

"Excess of riches is no guarantee of godliness."

"Is there a book of those sayings? No, never mind."

Mrs. Tyler finally noticed that Molly was dressed all in black, as she was.

"My dear," she said, and took Molly's hand, recognizing her sister in loss.

Molly flinched.

***

The fire that had eaten into Dean when he was only five had enveloped him again, and every old wound burned. He felt the hand on his neck, sinking in again. _Now or never._

"My mother stopped you once," Dean said, his fists clenched.

"She's not here now."

"I am her son."

The flames eased away from him, but he still burned.

"Hate, anger, fear – abstractions don't provoke people," Azathunn said softly. "They only give them direction."

"Family provokes," Dean said, and understood Azathunn and Hell better than he ever wanted to.

The whirl of flames pulled away from him then and the building caught fire where it touched.

"I have a message from Sam. He's ready to come back."

"A cheap lie? No, Dean. We were close, once. Don't do that."

"No lie. It's what he wants. He thinks I'm here to beg for his soul, but I know what his soul wants. He wants to get away, to be independent. He wants a separate life. Freedom."

"You couldn't allow that."

"I could," Dean said.

"You'd walk away from him?"

"If I saw him stand with you, I'd know he was a lost cause. Lead the battle that Azazel has prepared for."

"Tez will appear if I do," Azathunn said, his fire flickering briefly. "He knows I'm here."

"He can't find us if I'm wearing this," Dean said, and withdrew the amulet from under his shirt.

Azathunn's flames subsided, and for a moment, Dean thought he saw the giant from the prairie, something very much like Tez's true form. The fire returned with Azathunn's anger, more powerful than ever and Dean backed away with his arm over his face.

"We will have this war. God will listen to us when there are no more humans to hear him," Azathunn roared. "And you will fall with the rest."

He flashed into white-hot power and Dean was thrown through the door as the building exploded. Sam saw the explosion from five blocks away and ran as fast as he ever had.

***

Molly recognized the look in Mrs. Tyler's eyes, even if her hand was unexpected. "I lost him near eight months ago," she said without intending to.

"And my Edgar passed the year after the fires in Lawrence," said Mrs. Tyler, still clutching Molly's hand.

"Mrs. Tyler, may I ask-"

"Anything, Molly, anything."

"What was Samuel's message? Was it urgent?"

"Oh, yes, it was, well, it seemed urgent to him, but as messages go, it was rather simple: _'Stay at the hospital._ '"

"I beg your pardon?" Molly asked, wondering if there were more.

"That's all. I was to find you and tell you to stay at the hospital. He seemed to think there would be need for you there."

"Where was he?"

"In church with me. I think we may yet be able to save him from his ways. The longer he's away from that Campbell man's influences… well, I can see you've recovered from your association with him."

Molly ignored the multiple insults and became momentarily disoriented, finding herself back in Salina, wishing she could slap the woman.

"Do you need assistance?" Mrs. Tyler asked, concerned.

"No, I'll be fine," Molly said.

"I meant in the hospital."

"Yes, but- No thank you, Mrs. Tyler. I'm sure that with Yellow Jack around, there are many pressing cases of alcohol intoxication for you to take on. I need to get to Samuel."

"Well I don't know where he is now, but he said you might try to ignore his message."

"I'll find him."

Mrs. Tyler took Molly's other hand and looked her right in the eyes. " _'Stay at the hospital._ ' And if that's not enough, he said, _'Tell her not to make my mistake.'_ He seemed in rather a hurry the entire time. He was running when I met him and running when I left."

Molly's face was serious now, and she ached to find Sam and Dean both. But she understood Sam's warning.

"Mrs. Tyler, I must ask a favor of you now."

"Anything, my dear Molly. Please call me Eugenie."

"Take a message back to Samuel, please."

The lights flickered in the tavern, and Molly pulled Mrs. Tyler outside. The streetlights popped and showered glass around them as the gas vented into the air.

"What in Heaven's name?" cried Mrs. Tyler, clinging to Molly.

"Listen, Eugenie, find him, no matter what. Tell him to find another way. And if you see Dean – Mr. Campbell should be there too – tell him the same thing. ' _Side by side is the only way_.' Can you tell them that?"

"Is he still in the company of that man?" Mrs. Tyler said, forgetting the odd events in her disappointment. "But I have no idea where they-"

The air reverberated from a powerful explosion near the river.

"One of the steamboats!" Mrs. Tyler screamed.

The air over the river burned with fire, but no fire that came from coal. The light from the river was blinding at times, but she could see a giant, she thought.

"Go toward the commotion. You will find them there in the middle of it, I'm sure. Pray that we find a way out, all of us, Mrs. Tyler, and go quickly. We'll talk about your husband when you return, but I must get to the hospital. Tell Samuel _and_ Dean my message. ' _Side by side_.'"

Mrs. Tyler found herself backing up the steps into her buggy where the driver waited.

"We'll go to the river,"  she said to the driver.  _Mr. Campbell has two loyal friends and I would like to know why.  Perhaps he isn't headed for hell after all._

***

Dean had barely recovered from the first explosion when a tall figure knelt beside him and then collapsed on him as a second explosion shook the city, far larger this time.

"Azazel," said Dean, lifting Sam off him.

"No, it's Azathunn."

"It worked?" Dean asked in surprise.

"Now what?" Sam asked.

"Well, I hoped you'd step up and not make me think of everything," Dean said. He hugged Sam quickly around the neck before Sam could answer.

"Told you I'd come back," said Sam when Dean stopped crushing his windpipe.

"How do we deceive someone who is doubt and deception?" Dean asked, not ending the embrace.

"I know his weakness," Sam said, but it was not a moment that made him happy.

"Yeah, we all have our weaknesses, Sam." The thought didn't make Dean feel any better either. "Let's hope Molly makes it through this, even if we don't."

"She'll be fine, but you won't believe how I know that or who I saw here today."

Sam's unlikely story was interrupted by a further explosion and in the distance a figure, taller than anything around, appeared in the river.

"Tez," said Dean, and vanished out of Sam's arms. Fire burned over Sam and he disappeared too.

***

_July 1, 1875 – President's Island, Southwest of Memphis, Tennessee_

Armageddon came to the heart of America. Over the island, fire burst into existence, blinding and hungry, devouring and consuming the air and the trees it touched.

"WHERE IS HE?" cried Azazel, his voice loud over the whole island.

Uriel appeared at the far side of the wide clearing, supremely confident that no matter how many angels fell, he would always have enough humans to carry on the fight. Malachi knelt by him in the grass of the clearing, hands over his face, weeping.

Azazel knew his time had come. Not only could he remove Sam and Dean, but his god would lead his forces against the army of Heaven. Yellow-eyed demons appeared around Azazel – his children, ready to claim Hell for their own. Other demons joined them, hoping to gain favor. Azazel stood with his yellow-eyed army, feeling Azathunn's power flowing in them.

Uriel's angels appeared, dozens from the Garrison in human form, and after them a host of people who'd stayed in Memphis or been trapped there and heard his call – at the front was Kearney, doing what he'd always dreamed of since Uriel first appeared to him. Several of the local clergy joined the holy battle.

A shock went through both sides when Tez appeared behind the angels, towering over the scene in his armor and war mask, an obsidian blade in his hand. His feet were deep in the river and the mud.

"Will you kill me again, brother?" he asked Azathunn in a voice that boomed out across the island.

"Samuel stands by us again, as he should," shouted Azazel. Sam appeared on his knees beside the demon, flames still curling around him.

"It's fitting he should be here to face his brother," Uriel replied. Dean found himself at Uriel's side and looked around at the men and women gathered there. He was disappointed, but not surprised, to see Kearney at the front.  He could barely make out Sam across the wide gap between them.

Azazel stood across the clearing with his yellow-eyed army, several of the more disreputable people Dean had known in Memphis, and a good sampling of the devout who favored Azazel's terms and his promise of unending life. New people appeared as he watched, and it was with some shock that he saw the hunters and the nuns arrive.

Frank took one look at Dean and went toward Azazel's side. Jesse followed him, seeing Sam standing by Azazel's side, and then realized what his choice meant for his soul. He hesitated, and yelled Sarah's words at Sam, who only nodded. He called out to Frank to think again, but Frank ignored him. Jesse backed away slowly and walked toward the angels, who pushed him to the front lines.

Sister Constanza took Sister Cethia's hand and they walked toward Kearney.

"The Lord had a greater purpose for us than ever we thought," she said, but Cethia lagged and eventually tugged her hand free.

"I see no Lord at work here," she said. "Death and fear fill the days here, and now we may die of the fever too. If these are my choices, I cannot choose angels."

Constanza ran after her, grasping at Cethia's habit as it blew behind her in the breeze. "Cethia! Do not lose faith."

"Let her go!" yelled Kearney. "She won't survive. I'll make sure of it."

Constanza stood stock still and watched her charge give over her soul to evil for the most mundane of reasons.

"Am I late?" asked Rex, who had appeared near Dean. "Oops, wrong side," he said casually, and strolled over to the other side, where the yellow-eyed demons pushed him forward, closer to the humans.

"We're all black inside!" he snarled, shaking their hands off.

The battle began with fire and wings, humans on the sandy ground, gigantic figures taking the fight into the sky. The angels and demons that remained in human form below still brandished weapons of unspeakable power, weapons of Heaven and Hell let loose on Earth.

"WAIT!" yelled Sam, and it had more power than he thought.

Azazel stood behind Sam, and far behind that was a wall of fire, Azathunn. His guttering voice echoed over the field: "Now, Samuel."

Dean frowned. _I hope you're not improvising, Sam. Or not too much._

Sam walked forward, through the yellow-eyed demons, past Rex, who nodded approvingly, and through the crowd of people who'd answered the demons' call to victory. He wondered how many of them he could spare. He was soon in the open space between the armies, and could clearly see Dean by Uriel's side, and Malachi standing now, watching him intently. Beyond, to the north, was Tez, a warrior ready to do battle against his own brother in the south. Sam walked east.

Dean stepped forward, following the only guideline Sam had had time to give him: "Do what I do, and make it look good. Good enough to fool me, even."

He and Sam worked their way closer, moving away from both sides, Sam looking as bloodthirsty as the demons behind him; Dean's gaze was steely and distant – distractingly so from Sam's perspective. They moved to one side of the clearing as the sun stood overhead, and Dean pulled a knife from his boot.

"Dean. Do not turn against him," came a voice from behind Dean. It was Malachi's deep voice, tired, but not weakened. He came to Dean as quickly as he could, and when Uriel drew his sword, Tez simply said, "No" and Uriel froze there.

Rex Crosby was bent over, hands on his knees, keeping one eye on Sam and Dean and one on a small snake that lay dying on the ground below him, trampled by the assembling forces. It struck at him, to no avail.

"That's the spirit," he said to the snake, as much as to Malachi's outburst. He worked his way quickly toward Sam and the four ended up in a small group, each wary of the others. Sam wished the demon would be gone, but Rex was looking at Malachi.

"I hate to say this, but I think the big guy there is right, Malachi. You'd do much better not following Uriel's orders," said Rex.

When Dean had had about enough of Rex and Malachi interfering, he looked the other way in disgust and saw the boat. Sam saw it too. In it was a woman all in black, who must have been close to collapse from heat stroke, but still she soldiered on, waiting for the man in the boat to row it up against the shore. She made a very inelegant and unladylike leap onto the island and strode toward Dean, a scowl taking over her face.

Dean's mouth hung open, mirrored by Sam's.

"Well this gets more interesting by the second," said Rex cheerfully.

"Who is this?" Malachi asked.

"A woman I once knew," was all Dean could think to say.

"Mr. Campbell!"

"I changed my name - it's Winchester. You know Sam, my brother." He took pleasure in the look that crossed her face as she made several unpleasant connections in her memory.

The roaring cloud of fire, the demons with yellow eyes, the angels with wings unfurled, and the towering figure in the river had not shaken her. She'd known the world was a place where Heaven and Hell waged war all the time, and what she saw in front of her were merely extensions of this belief. But Dean and Samuel, together, brothers - that shook her.

"Mr. Whitman-" she said, starting afresh with the man she liked more. "I was sent with a message. ' _Side by side,'_ she said. ' _Find another way.'_   I like that Molly.  We have a lot in common."

Dean choked, but Sam smiled.

"But I can't say I've been right about you two. Heaven and Hell arrayed against you – if it had been just Heaven I wouldn't have blinked, but this is different. This changes things. I think side by side is where I shall stand as well. We are a paltry opposition, but we shall be spirited."

"Mrs. Tyler, what are you doing here?" Dean asked.

"Don't interrupt the lady," said Rex. "She's making more sense than you two ever did."

"You keep your hands off her soul," said Malachi.

"Sam, can we get on with the fight?" Dean said, looking under his brow at Sam, not needing to fake his anger. "Az is expecting it."

"Gladly," Sam said under his breath, and leaped at Dean. "I told Tez I'd kill you all over again."

"What?" Dean yelled, as Sam tackled him.

"Make it look good, Dean."

Dean wrestled as Sam choked him against the grass; he focused on Sam's face, trying to find the truth in it, but Sam was murderous.

"Sammy, don't," he gasped.

"We come back, Dean. Just like this. We'll be sitting ducks from the moment we're born."

"I didn't know. You went in and I had to follow you. And we don't … want to be in Hell," Dean gasped.

Dean was losing consciousness and the world became darker and dimmer around him.

"Why did you ever ask me to kill you?" Sam said, distraught. "Why do you need to pull me in?"

"I'm not asking now," Dean hissed, working his hands up under Sam's arms to push him off.

A fire such as no one had seen, even the angels, lit the sky and burned the air as the battle erupted again. Tez grappled with Azathunn and caught hold of him briefly, only to see his hand burned away, leaving only two fingers.

The sound of the battle shook the island and the humans below, but the one human who stood with Sam and Dean dared not look at the sky for fear of going blind. Only Malachi and Rex watched as their gods fought above them while Mrs. Tyler watched Sam and Dean struggle below.

***

_July 1, 1875, 4:28 pm_

The moon passed before the sun, as astronomers expected, and the world dimmed like at no other time, not like cloud or twilight, but like the end of the sun. Crescents of light played under the trees at the edges of the battle, but demons and angels - in human vessels or in their true forms - had no time or care for tricks of light.

Still, they soon stopped. They stopped their bloodless, deafening battle, and with them the humans around them halted as well and looked to their angelic guardians and their demonic rulers, no longer clear or certain of their purpose.

"Sam. Look." Dean's voice was rough. Even as he lay on the ground with Sam astride him, he could see that the light had changed. The sun was going out, and the battle had ceased all around.

Sam turned away from Dean, blood dripping down his jaw where Dean had struck a blow. This was no feint – the angels and demons were frozen in battle poses and moments of death and victory, all watching the same thing. Their faces were a mixture of dread and veneration, the awe that human preachers speak too easily of.

Sam followed their gaze to where Tez, now barely human in appearance, was wrapped ever more tightly in the flames of Azathunn so that they both glowed. The sun seemed to be with them, not in the sky.

As the eerie dimness of total eclipse descended on Memphis, Azathunn and Tez were there, terrible, huge, locked in battle. When the sun slipped behind the moon entirely, they were not there, winked out of the world. Nothing moved.

***

In a gray and barren land, inside the windowless walls of a roofless building built so long ago and then abandoned to hope and nothing else, a blinding creature appeared. It was half of fire and half of ice, and then became two men in the next moment, each with a hand on the other's chest, one pulling, one pushing.

Beside them were two altars, on which lay the stories of the truth, each opened to the last page, begging to be read when the time came.

"Where are we?" Azathunn asked, as the silence sank in.

"Where we left each other; where we divided the world. This part we could not divide," Tez said, all his memories surging to be heard.

They approached the altars, Az to his, for it was clearly his, and Tez to the other. There were three books on each table. The third was a thin piece of transparent material that bore symbols they could not understand.

The second was a book whose pages were human skin, translucent but for the black scorched symbols that rang in their ears as it spoke its story. They knew this story, and they had a part in it. The script was clear to them, the same script that Sam and Dean had first seen in Malachi's house. The voice was high and deafening and cold, telling the painful truth of angelic brothers who chose to fight forever despite their promise – brothers who had not found peace because they believed in war.

The first book, Tez and Azathunn both feared. They could hear it ever louder and clearer in their minds, a story they knew too well, words they'd spoken in the face of God. Its ancient symbols were a promise pressed into wet red clay and then left behind to set like rock in the dryness of this between-world. This was the story they'd walked away from forever, the promise they couldn't keep.

Azathunn touched the first book and cried out, rage and sorrow and fear no longer contained. It was deafening now in his head, fearful words that doomed him and his brother to be joined together, and he'd betrayed that.

Tez was tracing the lines of the same story in his book, trying to remember how it ended, but it always ended the same, with his fear taking over. He read the words aloud, speaking a tongue that only his brother Azathunn knew. He paused and spoke a final line that had not been imprinted in the clay, but needed to be.

"You are my brother forever."

"And I am yours. Take hold of me. If you can," Azathunn said.

Tez grabbed him tight and they were gone from that place forever.

***

The whirling blaze that was Tez and Azathunn entwined flashed back into existence over the desolate island where humans fought a war for others. They were locked in closer struggle than before, their faces pressed together; it was harder to separate one from the other in the maelstrom of fire and ice. There was no god for the demons or the angels to follow, but they resumed the battle as the sun reappeared. As the light grew again from a shining spot to the hot daylight of late July, a cry went up.

It came from Uriel in the north, a deafening "NO!" directed at his own god, and it came a moment later from Azazel, across the battlefield in the south. They had seen now what was different, the fate that Az and Tez had always moved toward, and they feared it. And they fled, before it could consume them. Uriel blazed free of his vessel and it slumped to the ground as he vanished in a tower of light. Azazel burst from the preacher's mouth and spun down toward Hell, feeling the power fading in him even as he went, holding what little he could to last him until he faced the brothers again.

Sam and Dean watched the battle raging around them, even as Uriel and Azazel vanished. Azathunn's flames were still consuming Tez, but they did not dance over what remained of his body any more but flowed through him. Tez turned his head and looked toward Malachi, who stood barely five feet from where Sam knelt over Dean. Malachi froze for a moment, his face a mass of confusion, and then a profound sadness entered his eyes.

"Ohhhhh," was all he said, a weary acceptance of something Sam and Dean could not hear. This was followed by a rich, deep laugh that did not match the time or place, and with that laugh, his energy returned and his wings appeared - massive, dark wings that spread in the air. Rex jumped back.

Tez turned his eyes to Sam and Dean, eyes caught in a whirl of fire, so that the fire seemed to come from within them now. Azathunn and Tez took ever less distinct a shape, grey and silver, like ash from a fire, but no longer the flame.

Malachi stepped between the gods and the men, blocking out the sight but not the sounds of the battle.

"Stop fighting and turn away from this," Malachi said, his voice calm and confident.

"What the hell's happening to them?" Rex shouted over the roar, watching Az and Tez blur together.

Mrs. Tyler had marveled at the eclipse, but had been forced to cower when the fire returned. _It's gone all silent now_ , she thought, but it was her ears giving out. Her eyes would soon follow, but she could not turn from this spectacle.

Sam stepped off Dean and helped him up.

"Azazel and Uriel have escaped, but it's too late now. You cannot die like this," Malachi yelled over the noise. "Come here and I will protect you."

"Protect them from what? No one's even thinking about them any longer! Or me!" Rex screamed.

Dean pulled Sam close and they stood before Malachi, his wings outstretched against the ever-brighter glow that came from behind him. Outside his embrace, Azathunn and Tez consumed each other, bringing together what they had split apart so long before. The sound of it, their final battle against themselves and all the souls within them, shook the forces on the ground, and the light blinded the humans.

"I cannot help you in your battles when you walk the earth again," Malachi said, as he folded his wings around them. "I hope my brothers and sisters will see you for what you are in time to save you. Malachi pulled tighter against the storm, shielding Sam and Dean as best he could.

"Come on lady, we can still get away," Rex said desperately, grabbing Mrs. Tyler's arm. But Mrs. Tyler would not be grabbed.

"Tell me what you are."

"I’m a demon, you crazy bitch, and I'm leaving you here."

"Why did you stand with them?"

"They're interesting. You all are. You're like viruses, mutating the way the world works with every free choice you make." Rex took a last look back and it was one too many. They left the world together, a demon and a crusader.

***

"Will we be together?" Azathunn asked.

"Not as you fear," Tez replied.

"Then I won't leave you," Azathunn said. "Do you doubt me?"

"I _am_ doubt."

"You are hope lost in doubt."

The first brothers found their way back to the promise they'd made, and found a way into each other, but it was more than the world could take. As they spiraled into one form, the blast wiped away everything else. Angels and demons, still locked in their disbelief, were obliterated. The ground shook, the air tore open and something beyond the scope of angels and demons came into being.

In the arc of Malachi's burning wings, Sam and Dean clung to each other, foreheads pressed tight together, every sense overloading as they screamed against the sheer power of it all. Between their bodies the amulet glowed briefly, and then everything was gone.

 


	14. Burn It All

The hospital was not busy, and not a sound reached the city from the island. It was desperately hot, well over 100 degrees, and the ward lost a few not to disease but for lack of cool air and water. Molly paced the ground floor hallway, useless now that other help had arrived.  She returned to the ward to help anyway, but something had changed, just after the sun returned from behind the moon, and she could not say what. She feared she would be alone in the world.

***

Sam and Dean stayed perfectly still, listening to each other's rapid breathing, fingers interlocked, arms around each other's backs and not letting go. There was no other sound but the air racing into Sam's nose as he struggled to stay with Dean. Dean's own breath sought a way out through his clenched teeth and his arms had gone numb under the crushing pressure of Sam's embrace.

A breeze touched them, so gentle it was almost unnoticed, and the warmth of the sun burned again on their cheeks and necks. The soft whisper of the river rushing through the grass at the edge of the island returned to them.

Dean opened one eye and gasped.

"Are we dead?" Sam asked.

"The field is still here," Dean said shakily. "The sky, the trees are - Sam you gotta see this."

Sam opened his eyes and pulled his face back from Dean's. The trees were flattened and the soil scorched black and gray on top. On the ground around them, an arc of wings was seared into the soil, a dark circle of protection and sacrifice.

"He kept us alive," Sam said softly.

"Where is everyone else?" Dean asked, looking around at the empty island.

"Gone with Az and Tez. Wiped out."

"Did we win?"

"I don't think you win a war like this, Dean."

***

Molly left work as early as she could and rode with a colleague to the Gayoso hotel, from where she made her way to the riverfront. Nothing was amiss, nothing had burned or exploded apart from one house on the outskirts; the quarantine station was still there on the shore, of no use now. A few people ventured out but the heat drove them into the nearest saloon.

"Dean, where are you?" Molly said out loud on the wharf, looking south toward where she thought she'd seen a god from her childhood, a giant in armor and feathers. "Samuel," she said to no one. And finally, "I need to get out of the sun." She headed home.

***

"What happened, Dean?"

"They're all gone."

"Even Mrs. Tyler?"

"Especially Mrs. Tyler."

They wandered the field in a circle, looking at the trees laid flat like matchsticks, all pointing outward.

"Azazel and Uriel left before this happened," Sam reminded him.

"Then we'll deal with them when the time comes, Sam."

"All those demons and angels, gone," Sam marveled.

"And all those people," Dean said, his mood less grateful by the minute.

"And Malachi. He died for us, Dean."

"Sam, he thought we were God. That angel was a few feathers short."

They returned to the spot where the last of Malachi still showed clearly and Sam squatted down to touch the mark.

"Sam? I hate to interrupt, but we have a very different problem now."

"What?" Sam asked, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked up at Dean.

"We're on an island, minus a boat."

Sam spun around, looking at the shore, now visible in all directions. The city was visible in the distance, and the river flowed strongly on every side.

"There!" Sam said, and pointed at the boat that had brought Mrs. Tyler to them.

"Do we really have to row across a river to get out of Hell?" Dean asked, feeling the heat and fatigue sapping him.

"Come on, Dean. Last one in the boat…" Sam turned and ran toward it and Dean missed the rest of what he said.

***

The river was wider and stronger than they'd judged, and it took both of them on the oars to make even a long diagonal to reach the eastern shore. They stumbled from the boat, Dean pulling Sam out as the boat slipped back into the stream and was tugged off in the current.

"Over and over, really?" Dean said, bringing up fate and destiny as they caught their breath on the riverbank.

"And always with you," Sam replied, in a tone that Dean couldn't identify, as much as he tried.

"Rough," Dean agreed, terrified at losing Sam over and over again, relieved at never losing him, and confused by his own confounded emotions.  

"Do we get out before they find us?"

"No more dying, Sam." Dean said it like it would never happen.

"Ghosts, then." Sam was already thinking of how they would disappear.

Dean was thinking of the dark-haired, dark-eyed woman who opened the door of a brothel in Salina, Kansas, listened to the unlikely story of how he'd come to own it, and made him as human as she could in the time she had.

***

_July 3, 1875 - Memphis, Tennessee_

The house that Molly inherited had stood untouched through Simon's death, through the worst plague ever to hit Memphis, even the return of the ever-astonishing Dean Winchester and his remarkable brother Samuel from Hell itself. But it could not have been prepared for the conversation that was held that night.

"Die? You mean disappear."

"No, Molly, we mean die," Sam clarified.

"He means we need to go, for good," Dean said attempting to put a softer spin on Sam's still blunt view of their life.

"And you have another knife? Or another angel to smite you with his sword and drive you away from me?"

"Molly-" Dean took her hand and kissed it, holding it to his face so that she couldn't help but see a tear. Not in all their years together had he failed to say that he loved her and relied on her, and now he asked for another sacrifice. Sam sat silent beside him, watching her hopefully.

"Am I to be left with no one?"

"If we're going to make it, we leave now, and we go for good, and all trace of us dies with us. Heaven and Hell will remember us; they'll be waiting for us. We have to be gone."

"I made a list," Sam added awkwardly.

"A list. Aren't you kind?" Molly said in reply, taking the envelope with the same hand Dean was holding. She withdrew the handwritten letter, in Sam's once-careful script, now a bit shaky since his return.

"Journals, papers, books, Malachi's collection, letters, pictures... She stopped there and thought to look into the envelope. There was only one photograph. Sam smiled from the picture, his hair oddly neat and the suit entirely inappropriate to him. Dean was uneasy, his arm tight around Sam's waist, as if to hold him in the frame. In fact, Sam had been holding Dean from escape and second thoughts. Molly turned the photo over to read "Memphis, May 31, 1873."

"This was just before you –" and she stopped, not wanting to speak the words. "I shall not call up a demon by mentioning its treachery, lest it appear and take the credit." In her hand she held the only real proof of the existence of God, and the world beyond her own. She returned it carefully to the envelope and continued reading from Sam's exhaustive list.

"Clothing. Property of all kinds not listed above…." She read the next long part in silence and then burst out in frustration: "The records of the following people and others as may be necessary in Salina, Lawrence, St. Louis, Zion Grove, and elsewhere, as they can be discovered… _must be collected and burned_ '?! That could take the rest of my life!"

Dean waited, sympathetic to her complaint but bracing himself for the next part. Molly returned to the letter when neither Sam nor Dean answered her. Her face paled, and her hand turned the letter over in her lap.

"I am to put oil and salt over you both and set you on fire?" she said, her voice moving between restrained anger and disbelief.

"We'll be dead already…" Sam volunteered. Dean elbowed him, then took the letter from her and wrapped his hand around hers again.

"There's more riding on this than our lives. More than your grief."

"I sincerely doubt that," Molly said, unable to lift her voice above a whisper.

"It's the only way. If there's no trace, they can't find us."

"They know your _names_ , Mr. W., and that won't change. Yes, that angel, he told me."

"We'll have to hope that when we come back, it's somewhere else, or so far in the future that they've lost interest. Malachi said demons can't wait, it's not in them," Dean explained, to no avail. He looked at Sam for help.

"Molly, I know you love Dean-" Sam began.

"I love you both, Samuel. What he loves so strongly, we all come to love."

"Thank you – I think. Molly, it isn't just us, it's our parents too. We pulled them into it when we set them free from Hell. We've got to give them a fighting chance, at least. If we vanish now, if we die, it will be that much harder for Azazel or Uriel to find us."

Molly sat for a long time, silently staring at the picture she'd taken back out of the envelope. Tears fell, but still she said nothing, nor did they. "May I keep this safe?" she asked, finally.

"That more than anything has to go. That image, and us," Dean said again, his voice firm.

"To lose you both forever…"

"You'd do well to forget us. Line the doors and windows with salt and never pray again for an angel," Sam replied. He took her hand now too, for the first time since he'd come back from Hell.

"Then we will have a walk and a meal and you will sing me a song before you go. He never sang for the guests," she told Sam, "only for me and the girls, with Glenn banging on the piano."

Sam smiled at the thought of Dean singing any tune, let alone singing it well. Dean looked paler than when he'd said they had to die.

Molly kept them to that small promise, preparing a lavish meal with their help. She complimented them on how well they'd been trained in the kitchen, Sam giving credit to their father, and Dean not wanting to credit Sal for the few good things she'd given him.

After the meal, they walked the block or two along the quiet neighborhood streets where Molly lived, out toward the main street. The southwest wind had blown most of the sulfur from the city air, and brought a coolness up from the river. She had her Dean Winchester on her right arm, and her Samuel Winchester on her left, and she was at once the most endangered and the safest person in all creation. When they kissed her good night, she got ten years of her life back.

***

Molly slept poorly that night and woke cross, only to find the house empty. The letter was resting on a tray on the table in the parlor. It contained a small, added note inside, folded around the picture.

Molly,  
  
   I wish I knew how to bring you back with us, but even Sam and I will lose all memory of this life. We trust you to do one last  thing, and yes, the fate of the world is on you now. Finish us,  and find a new life and a new love – Edward Singer at the  hospital has had his eye on you, and I'm sure you know that.  Burn this note and burn everything.  
Everything, Molly.  
  
 ~~I love you.~~  
---  
  
The last line was crossed out and Sam had written beside it instead: "We love you."

***

_July 29, 1875_

The early morning cool brought with it the body collector and his creaking wagon that trundled along slowly as he called for the dead. There were still some folks dying in Memphis each day, but today no one called him to stop. Molly stood at the window and watched the large wagon appear. It held only two bodies, and she began shaking horribly as it all sank in.

She composed herself with great difficulty and opened her front door to wave the collector to a halt. He nodded and stopped the wagon in front of her house.

Not a single soul had remained on her block, not when the quarantine threatened, and so no one saw the body collector's most unusual pick up – three small wooden crates stuffed with the clothing, journals and other belongings that were to perish, and a living woman, who sat herself next to the collector without daring to look in the back.

"If I may, Mrs. Hildebrandt," the man began politely. "I was told that you wished to see these two bodies burned immediately, and not taken to the morgue or the common grave." His voice was practiced solemnity and pity.

"That will do," was all she could say, and they rode out of town together, far out of the city to the east, avoiding a known quarantine station. The day was long, and hot, and the smell from the wagon blew around them more than once. The collector was immune, but the stench was intense, too strong even for such a day, as if the two bodies had been long abandoned.

She built a pyre with the collector's help in the middle of nowhere, all around her the lush green of Tennessee forests, where Sam would be at home, and Dean, if he were with Sam, would tolerate the simplicity of it all.

Molly could not lift the bodies onto the logs herself, nor bring herself to lift the shroud around the shorter of the two. Her kiss from Dean the night before would remain unblemished by the coldness of death.

She poured the kerosene over them, and the salt, and left the things they'd stored in the boxes to burn with them. _So many books and notes and journals about hunting and evil and God, and what does it matter now?_

"What does it matter now?" she asked again out loud, looking at the collector waiting on the wagon seat.

"They all ask that, ma'am. It matters to someone who remembers."

_And I can't. I can't remember half of it already. Goodbye Dean. Goodbye Samuel. God help you. God forgive you._  
  
She lit a match with the resolve that had always sustained her and tossed it toward the pyre, watching the kerosene catch fire and whip up into a spiraling cyclone of flame. She watched the fire, rather than the bodies that fed it. It was just fire now. It didn't speak.

Her mind raced, and her body, wracked with pain, protested the long vigil.  She ached to  be out of Memphis, to put it behind her and take all the roads that would lead her to Dean and Sam.

_You were right Abuelita, I am truly doomed._

***

When all was burned to embers, she returned to Memphis and began to pack. "We'll start at the beginning, in Lawrence, and wipe you from the sight of God and the Devil."

 


	15. EPILOGUE & CODA: Eadem mutata resurgo

_March 15, 1877 - In the New Mexico Territory_

The intersection in the tiny town of Grants was deserted, and improbable. He stood there, waiting in the poor shade of a palo verde, wondering what he would be called, wondering if the man who knew his name would show up or leave him to walk the rest of the way. It had been nearly two days since they were last together, and there was no one else on this road, and he was, frankly, a little worried. _He said corner of Santa Fe & Iron, two o'clock, Tuesday._

The clop of a horse's hooves and the creaking of wheels in the ruts of the road were a welcome sound, but he stepped behind the tree just in case. In a few minutes, the carriage rounded the corner, a sorry excuse for a horse-cart and an even sorrier horse pulling it. The man at the reins was tired from a long life lived in a short time, but still his eyes flashed with excitement as he saw the man at the side of the road, trying to hide behind the tree. He pulled his gun from where it rested behind his legs and cocked it.

"Step forth, bandit," said the man on the carriage.

"What is your name then, who holds a gun on me so poorly?" said the man, peering from behind the tree.

"What is yours, who hides his large body behind such a small tree?"

"I asked you first."

"My friends call me Seth," said the man in the carriage, enjoying his new name.

"And what do they call me?"

"They call you Horace," said Seth, his mouth curling up at his own cleverness and at the look of disappointment that passed briefly across Horace's face.

"Horace…." The man appeared deep in thought. "Horus. Seth and Horus. My god, are you serious? That's inspired! That's genius."

"Well, thank you."

"And that's dark – incest and murder in one story. You really did your research."

"I had some time, Horace," Seth said, rubbing it in while he still held the gun. "I looked in a lot of dark corners, trying to get you back."

Horace was silent, just watching the man on the cart for a while.

"So do you need a ride?" Seth asked, looking back just as intently.

"I do."

"Climb up then."

"What name do we tell people who ask about our family?"

"Uh… Smith, I guess," Seth said quickly and quietly. "Come on, get up here."

Horace sighed dramatically. "All this time, and that's all you've got? And you did so well with the first names."

"You think of something. And not something Egyptian."

***

The seat creaked under the weight of two riders and the horse pulled them along just a bit slower through a dry desert landscape.  A cool wind blew up from behind them.

"Was all of that true? Those lives we led? Do we have a destiny?"  Horace asked the desert.

"I can live with just you over there and me over here – but I'd rather not. That much is real," Seth replied.

"What are you talking about?" Horace asked.

"Dammit, it's not a Seth Smith word. – Oh yeah, you're right. 'Seth Smith,' I don't like that. Too damn hard to say."

"Just tell me what you mean."

"It isn't a Dean word either – it's just... not in my vocabulary-" he said, delaying the inevitable.

Horace hung his head, and Seth sighed. Horace knew he'd won.

"Destiny or not, brother or not, what I see is… beautiful. That's what it is. Not you, not you personally," Seth added, flustered.

"I'm not beautiful?"

"God, you-! FUCK! Don't make me say it."

"Maybe in the next life, I won't love you," Horace said, keeping a straight face.

"Oh, you'll still love me," Seth said with supreme confidence, nodding.

Seth edged a little closer on the seat, reins in one hand, and reached out.

"Watch the road, Seth."

"Horse knows where he's going," Seth said, looping the reins around the footrail.

The seat creaked again as he shifted closer still and took his brother's face in his hands and kissed him.

"Where to then?" he asked when they finally separated. "I hear Wyoming's nice."

"It's our road. Let's just keep going until we find the end ourselves."

 

 

________________________________________  
________________________________________

 

 

 

 

 

**CODA**

**Although changed, I rise again the same**  

 

**June 23, 1983 - Lawrence, Kansas**  
  
Samuel Winchester was born again in early May, the second son of Mary Campbell Winchester and John Winchester, of Lawrence, Kansas. He was born just about four years after his older brother, Dean Winchester, entered the world.  
  
Their new home bore no echo of the protests decades earlier when it was built atop a historic Lawrence neighborhood. There was no visible trace left of the lifeless, scorched soil into which the basement was dug. Mary, like her husband and their two happy, healthy sons, showed no outward sign of the curse she believed she had brought upon them with that one foul kiss from the yellow-eyed demon. The far older curse that marked her sons – that was of their own making.  
  
***  
  
Dean held Sam in his arms for the first time in the nursery upstairs, and hugged him so tightly that Mary had to loosen his grip and admonish him for hurting his baby brother. "Not gonna hurt him," said Dean, a vocal and determined four and a half years old. _No one's gonna hurt my brother long as I'm here._  
  
***  
  
But an angel had been watching and a demon had been ready, long before Samuel and Deanna Campbell even met. After so much time, the Winchester brothers had returned.  
   
---  
  
 

* * *

 


	16. THANKS, NOTES & EXTRAS

 

 **ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS** (in alpha order)

to **[](http://afg1.livejournal.com/profile)[**afg1**](http://afg1.livejournal.com/)  ** for hand-holding, story clarity, and careful beta editing  
to **[](http://aprylrae.livejournal.com/profile)[**aprylrae**](http://aprylrae.livejournal.com/)  ** for support and encouragement from start to finish and for believing in this epic before anyone else  
to [](http://asteroidbuckle.livejournal.com/profile)[**asteroidbuckle**](http://asteroidbuckle.livejournal.com/)  , [](http://reading-is-in.livejournal.com/profile)[**reading_is_in**](http://reading-is-in.livejournal.com/)  , and many others for their appreciation of the previous stories and their enthusiasm  
to [](http://keerawa.livejournal.com/profile)[**keerawa**](http://keerawa.livejournal.com/)   for plentiful comments in prior years, nudging and prodding to get going on it, amazing beta-ing, and a sincere interest in the heart and soul of the story  
to **[](http://pvt-zaslavsky.livejournal.com/profile)[**pvt_zaslavsky**](http://pvt-zaslavsky.livejournal.com/)**   for the glorious artwork and for getting the AU/historical/mythological/Sam&DeanEpicLove vibe exactly right. <3

and of course to [](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/profile)[**spn_j2_bigbang**](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/)   for making this all possible, and the amazing [](http://wendy.livejournal.com/profile)[**wendy**](http://wendy.livejournal.com/)   & [](http://thehighwaywoman.livejournal.com/profile)[**thehighwaywoman**](http://thehighwaywoman.livejournal.com/)  for running the comm so well.

**HISTORICAL SOURCES & IMAGES**

The prologue, set on the battlefield of Chickamauga, draws from that location's history as a bloody Civil War battlefield and its reputation as one of the most haunted today. Obviously I didn't research the angel-demon war, but the relatively recent (for my story, set in 1875) war between the states gave many obvious parallels and opportunities for historical elements. The landscapes presented themselves (Lake Mary, and its hook shape, for example) when I started looking, and the side trip to New Orleans, while not all I originally planned it to be, was as creepy as I had hoped. The house that Bellaire uses as her brothel (and that Dean sees as a ruin) was directly inspired by a real mansion in that part of Chalmette. Images of these and other influential and inspirational pictures can be found in [my picture post](http://write-light.livejournal.com/267864.html), which I highly recommend if you're interested in the era or in what kind of world this Sam and Dean inhabit.

The "prayer" that Sam and Dean use in this story to stop Azathunn cold is the same one they used in the first two stories, and now we find out a bit more about why it works, or why it works on a demigod, and why it works especially when _they_ say it. The premise for the prayer (which was shared with me by a friend from the region) is that of burn doctoring - a folk remedy used in Appalachia to treat light burns. More about that can be found at [vickilanemysteries.blogspot.com/2009/09/burn-doctor.html](http://vickilanemysteries.blogspot.com/2009/09/burn-doctor.html).  I've said a lot about this in the Author's Notes for the previous two stories.

The poem that Dean cobbled together to "sound right" for Sam is my own compilation of various translations of Catullus' _101_ , a poem of such great pain and loss that it bears reading in any translation you can find.  It is an elegy from Catullus to his dead brother, and nothing seemed more fitting here.  Judging by the many attempts at translation, it is nearly impossible to convey the words and ideas, so here is [the original Latin](http://rudy.negenborn.net/catullus/text2/l101.htm), if you're interested.  This is also the source of the title for Ch. 1.  On a side note, the poem led me to Anne Carson's _Nox_ , in which she attempts to deal with the death of her estranged brother through art and a close examination of what remains of his life.  I highly recommend it, although it's an "artist's book" and rather pricey because of the unusual presentation format.

The main backdrop for this story was always going to be Memphis, where Malachi the angel was living, and where Dean returned after the events in Sikeston, and where the final cataclysmic events take place. It's the heart of the country, but also a city with a very dark and very frightening past, in particular an epidemic unlike anything else in US history - the yellow fever outbreak of 1878. I shifted this forward in time for story purposes, but the events and conditions are what we know from historical record and [accounts of survivors](http://scholarship.rice.edu/jsp/xml/1911/27273/1/aa00184_04.tei.html). Images of the period and setting can be found all over, but some good ones are <http://www.printsoldandrare.com/tennessee/index.html>  
  
Yellow Fever visited Memphis and many other cities (like New Orleans) regularly for years, and since the mosquito transmission vector was unrecognized, it was truly a plague from hell - spreading like wildfire no matter what precautions were taken, wiping people out in days, and bringing on not only horrific symptoms (yellow eyes, bleeding from the ears, black vomit, raging fever and intense pain) but also horrific "countermeasures" - including burning sulfur, burning pitch, and spreading lime and carbolic acid on the streets. Surrounding Memphis at the time were swamps and bayous in which both garbage and dead animals were dumped, so the smell had to have been unbelievable. In 1878, "Yellow Jack" as it was known hit especially hard, for reasons not well understood, and claimed over 5000 lives in Memphis alone (out of a population of 40,000); in the end, Memphis ceased to function as a city for nearly a decade.  
  
Much of what I incorporated I had read about in _[The American Plague](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/books/review/Roach.t.html)_ , by [Molly Caldwell Crosby](http://www.mollycrosby.com/book_plague.html) (whose name did _not_ influence the names of my OCs, honestly). The first section of the book ("Memphis, 1878") is well worth reading. I also drew from the PBS American Experience documentary _The Great Fever,_ and also from [Tennessee State Library and Archives](http://www.tn.gov/tsla/index.htm) "Disasters in Tennessee". An especially dark time was the impromptu quarantining that was practiced by those who faced the flood of refugees out of the city. Close to 20,000 people left Memphis over the summer, most quite healthy, but they were treated as diseased and often attacked or beaten if they tried to enter surrounding areas and cities. One exception were the few people who came - or stayed - to help, dramatized by the very thinly disguised Sister Constance and her friends in this story, who are based on the Sisters of St. Mary's, now known as the "[Martyrs of Memphis](http://www.flickr.com/photos/stmarysmemphis/1339442724/)" for serving the sick at the cost of their own lives.

And finally, from current accounts of the time, we have bizarre deaths, lightning strikes, exploding street lights, and more, including the eclipse directly overhead. How could I pass that up, given that I'm writing in the _Supernatural_ world? :D

 

**AUTHOR'S NOTES**

I'm always disappointed to hear people dismiss whole genres (fan fiction among them) as not worthy or "not for me". This happens with Sam/Dean stories too, for reasons I can partly understand, but a good story will help you see WHY they are in love, like it or not. It happens also with historical stories, and AU stories, and "separated at birth" stories, and "stories with original characters" and my fic is all of those. I would like people to look past the tropes and misconceptions and give all of these types of writing fair consideration.

As I say every year, I am having SO MUCH FUN writing. I particularly love this challenge to tell a long and complete Sam/Dean story. This one _has_ gotten a bit epic, and that was not my original intention, but so far it seems to be holding together. Playing with superhuman characters is harder than it seems because they're so non-human. The only choice that makes sense to me is to give them very human characteristics and flaws, and what better way than to go to the original flaws in the system, Cain and Abel, and find out that they're still working out those issues even now. In _Remedy for Cain_ 's Author Notes, I said that the question of Cain and Abel intrigued me because of the utter silence of Abel in nearly all versions of the story. _Why was he so quiet?_ The thought occurred to me that perhaps Abel was not so innocent a martyr, but had an even greater sin to hide, and I will credit [](http://keerawa.livejournal.com/profile)[**keerawa**](http://keerawa.livejournal.com/) with making clear what that might be. It was a brilliant idea. From there, the parallels in Tez/Azathunn, Michael/Lucifer, and Dean/Sam became very easy to write.

Of course, Biblical mythology isn't easy to do either, so the first sin had to be, at its heart, a simple and undeniable request from (and to) the one person who can't be refused - your brother. If Cain's story is about murder of a brother, maybe Abel's story is an equally great sin - suicide, and in this case, suicide at the hands of your brother. I came to the line at the end, when Dean says "Family provokes" only within the last month of revising, but it lies at the heart of this story and the Winchester story we watch on _Supernatural_.

The character of Azazel also grew in importance as I wrote more. He was a fascinating but tragic figure on the show, so sure of his eventual victory by freeing Lucifer, so thorough in his dislike of Sam most of all, and of all Winchesters. When I posited him as the prophet of Azathunn in Hell, and imagined Azathunn giving him true creative power to make Yellow-Eyed demons, I was able to go easily from there to a Yellow/Red battle for power, and to Azazel's eventual disillusionment with his "Lord", which lead him to try the next best thing: Lucifer. Why, after all, was he sniffing around Lawrence years before the Campbells were in our story? Why his fascination with Mary Campbell, and his elaborate scheme to turn Samuel into Lucifer's vessel? To have so many people watching over Sam? And why Uriel's hatred of humanity and the angels' willingness to do evil in the name of what they called good?

Molly was a character that made a natural foil for Dean - someone who 'got him', who saw the humanity behind the flaws and the bravado, and someone who could rein him in with a word and a look. She had to bow out at the end of the first story because the second part was all about Sam and Dean alone in the world. But with the third story, I knew she'd be back. I didn't know she'd be back married and willing to do just about anything, but there she was, larger than life. I hope I've fleshed her out a bit more and done her justice as a character. She has the fate of the world on her shoulders now, and I know she can handle it, because she's already handled so much tragedy in her life. Through it all, she is resolutely human and decent, and I have no doubt she could lick a demon in a fair fight.

Winding up an epic story is also not easy, so I hope the choices I had to make were ones that readers can live with or at least relate to. This story is not over, but for now it's finished. I would love to return and look at the missing places in the lives I've described, Molly's in particular. This is a woman who knew from the start what hunters were, who didn't flinch when a demigod threatened her, and who didn't hesitate to take on the worst task at the end of this story.

I can also only hope that my attempt at tying this story into the Show'Verse isn't laughable but rather believable, by the time you get to the coda. It was not my original intent, until maybe halfway into the second story. When you start with the question " _What if there were always Winchesters?_ " you can end up in some pretty unusual places, quite apart from Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. In that sense, the story was never truly an Alternate Universe or even an Alternate Reality but a pre-series fic, and our _Supernatural_ Sam and Dean seem like a logical continuation. Where they go next, though, is a different story for a future time.

As for destiny, there is none. I think Edward Bulwer-Lytton (yes, that EB-L) said it best:

 

 

_Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart – the dark apology for every error. The strong and virtuous admit no destiny. On earth, conscience guides; in heaven, God watches. And destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one and dethrone the other._

  
Most importantly, this trilogy is meant to be a love story, a story of two souls who've made the ultimate mistakes and have to find a way out of it _together_ \- for their sake, for all our sakes, and quite literally for God's sake. The failure of others who came before them to find that _way out_ , the failure of other far more powerful creatures - whether by abandoning each other or by fighting each other eternally, happens to Sam and Dean as well, both in my story and in the show. What they realize is that _they are all they have_ and the answer has to come from both of them. Family provokes, but family also restores.

 


	17. Ace Zaslavsky - SPN_J2_BigBang Art: Winchester Recurrence

 

Please visit [her LiveJournal page](http://pvt-zaslavsky.livejournal.com/3566.html) and compliment her amazing work!

 

Title

 

 

 

**"Not a Ghost"**

  


**Soundtrack**

**"After I Made Love to You" **  
****

 

Icons

  


 


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